


yesterday/tomorrow

by nellywrites



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, Drinking to Cope, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Mentions of Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Professor Rip, Rating May Change, Recovery, Sara Lance & John Constantine, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Therapy, War veteran Sara Lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2018-12-14 17:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11788248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nellywrites/pseuds/nellywrites
Summary: Almost two years after the fact, Rip Hunter is still reeling from the heartbreakingly painful loss of his wife and son. Nothing seems to matter anymore, and when his grief and apathy turn dangerous, he's forced to seek help by way of bereavement counseling. This is where he meets Sara Lance, a transplant from Star City who is dealing with the brutal death of her older sister. They're both damaged and broken but they understand each other in ways no one else can. And maybe, together, they can take their broken pieces and turn them into something new.AKA: The one where they meet in grief counseling, become friends, and eventually fall in love.UPDATE 12/15- Chapter 5 was rewritten and reuploaded. It has over 5k words worth of new content.





	1. Inertia

The therapist says she’d prefer if they’d call her by her first name: Kendra.  She’s younger than she’d sounded on the phone, barely thirty, at the most. Tiny brown freckles speckle across the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks. A bold, white blonde curl frames the front of her otherwise brown hair. Her clothes verge on the trendy side of stylish. She has a bright, schoolteacher smile, engineered to put people at ease.

 

She makes him nervous.

 

When they’d spoken on the phone she’d sounded, not old exactly, but experienced, grave, like someone who had lived for long. Intellectually, he knows that age, experience and hardship are not collinear, but what does it say about him that someone who looks like she could be working a part time job serving him coffee while she completes her bachelor’s degree is going to be telling him how to fix his life?

 

He tries saying her name in his mind, breaks it down into its components-- ken drah. It sounds alien. Kendra is what he’d call a friend. She’s not his friend. She’s Dr. Saunders, bereavement counselor.

 

It is deadly quiet in the gymnasium where the meeting is being held. No sound but the squeak of the plastic whenever someone shifts in their chair. There are seven other unfortunate souls aside from him, all sat in a circle. The nine of them a tiny island in a chasm of echoes.

 

He used to wonder if people could read the tragedy on his face. If he bore the physical mark of his pain for others to identify. He certainly feels marked.

 

The people sitting around him are blank slates to him. Nothing of note aside from the particular brand of exhaustion that comes from loss. There is a young man with long hair, tied in a messy ponytail; an older couple who haven’t let go of the other’s hand since they came in; a young woman with kind brown eyes that remind him of his wife; a pair of siblings, both in their twenties; and then there is the woman sitting directly across from him.

 

She’d been the last to arrive, and had made a bit of entrance. She’s pretty, in the objective sense, with the stormiest blue eyes he’s ever seen on anyone and a dusting of freckles that extends through all visible parts of her skin. She sits erect and watchful, eyes constantly searching, as if scanning the room for possible danger. There’s a harshness to her beauty--she’s all angles and tensed muscles-- but there is something crumpled, almost collapsed, about her. She catches him staring and her thick eyebrows furrow together. He goes back to staring at his dirty shoes, but he can still feel her eyes on him.

 

Dr. Saunders finally ends the silence in the room when she stands from her chair and passes markers, name tags and square pieces of plain paper among the group. She tells them to write down their own name in the sticky tag, and the name of the deceased on the other paper.

 

He’s always hated that term, the deceased. It sounds so clinical, diagnostic. Terminal. He takes two pieces of plain paper nonetheless and writes down the names as neatly as he can, one first and then the other, Jonas and Miranda, struggling with the brace around his broken wrist, before letting them fall into the bowl with the rest of the tiny paper headstones. Then, he hastily scrawls _Rip Hunter_ on the name label and sticks it to the front of his jacket.

 

As the glass bowl goes around the circle, Rip considers the performative aspects of public bereavement. For example, the circle they’re sitting in; no beginning, no end. No one is more important, no one’s experience more valid. There are tissues in the little side table next to Dr. Saunders’ seat, and they’ve all been provided with a plastic water bottle.  There are refreshments, for _after._ Whatever that means.

 

He understands these things as necessary details, logical even. And yet he still feels vaguely insulted by the casual, fictive attempt at normalcy. They’re all sat with their little name labels and tiny water bottles like it’s a business conference. Like they’re connected by something other than the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. Christ, one woman even has a pad and pen.

 

“Tonight, I’d like us to begin with a guided meditation exercise,” Dr. Saunders says, breaking Rip out of his mental tirade. “I know that this is awkward and painful and most of you are probably very nervous about what will be happening tonight. So, just find a comfortable position in your chair, relax your body. Close your eyes, and when you’re ready I want you to sense your breath. Place a hand on your chest, feel it expand and contract.”

 

Rip does as she instructs and gingerly places his right hand on his chest, minding his cracked ribs, even if he feels like a tosser doing it.

 

“As you continue to breathe, bring forth the loss you are grieving. Let the story come naturally, the images, the feelings. Hold them gently.”

 

Dr. Saunders’ voice laps around the room.

 

“Take your time. Let the feelings come layer by layer, a little at a time.  Keep breathing softly, compassionately. Let whatever is there come forward. It could be pain and tears, anger and love, fear and sorrow. Let those feelings unravel out of your body and mind. Make space for any images that arise.”

 

He resists her prompts. He doesn’t want to think about his wife and child slowly dying alone. He doesn’t want to poke at those dark, baleful spaces in his psyche.

 

“Allow the whole story. Breathe and hold it all with tenderness and compassion. The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let it go into the heart of compassion. And when you are ready, I want you to open your eyes.”

 

Rip allows his eyes to part slowly. The older woman is weeping, but everyone else has the look of someone who has been forced to look at something they didn’t want to.

 

“Good job, everyone. Examining our feelings at that level can be uncomfortable, but it is necessary for the healing process to occur. For this process to be succesful you have to do one thing and that is you have to give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you’re feeling. And I want you to really think about this, because it’s not just about allowing yourself to be sad, or angry, but also to be okay, and happy. We’re going to be working through all of these together in the next six weeks.”

 

Dr. Saunders goes on to explain the rules of the group, which are standard: no interrupting people when they’re sharing, strict confidentiality, be mindful of what advice you share with others. She stresses that group should always be a safe place, and therefore there should be no judgement. Then, she takes the bowl with the names and gives it to the person next to her and instructs her to pick out a name, and read it out loud, and then pass it on, so they could “bring them into the room with us.”

 

The woman sitting next to Rip him goes first. She’s the one with Miranda’s eyes. Her name tag reads Caitlin.

 

“Dante,” she reads from the paper. Her voice is quiet and timid.

 

She passes the bowl to him. He unfurls the paper square.

 

“Laurel,” he says and when he looks up the woman across from him is looking at him with fire in her eyes.

 

He passes the bowl on to one of the siblings that came together. And so on until all the names but one are spoken aloud, echoing in the gymnasium like an elegy: Dante, Laurel, Jonas, Francine, Eva, Ronnie.

 

All names but one.

 

The glass bowl makes its way to Sara; that’s the woman sitting in front of him. Her handwriting is ornate and looped, like an artist’s. It seems at odds with her rough appearance. Sara, without the H, like the Dylan song: so easy to look at, so hard to define. Sara reaches into the bowl and cups the paper in her hand for a second. Rip already knows what it will say.

 

“Miranda,” she says.

 

It’s amazing how hearing his wife’s name can still make Rip’s chest seize after all this time.

 

“Let’s get to know each other, yeah?” Dr. Saunders says. “Let’s go around again, introduce ourselves, and you can say something about your loved one, it can be as little or as much as you want. You can also talk about why you’re here, what you’re expecting to get from the group.”

 

The older couple are called John and Lisa and Eva was their 6 year old granddaughter. Eva drowned in the family pool while her mother, John and Lisa’s daughter, was napping inside the house. And that is a horror Rip doesn’t want to get too close to. Lisa says the tragedy has torn their family apart in every way.

 

Caitlin’s fiance, Ronnie, had been a firefighter who lost his life in the line of duty. Cisco, the young man with the ponytail, lost his older brother Dante in a drunk driving incident. Their relationship had been difficult. And Francine, Iris and Wally’s mother, died of a rare disease. Their situation is further complicated by the fact that Iris and Wally did not grow up together. But out of everyone in the group, they were the only ones who had expected the death to happen.

 

When it is Rip’s turn to speak, he finds that he is nervous. His throat feels dry and he takes a swig of the water bottle. So much for making fun of it.

 

“I’m Rip Hunter. It’s been 602 days since my wife and son were killed. My wife, Miranda, was an archaeologist, and my son, Jonas, was in 4th grade.  The police say it was a mugging gone wrong. Just a senseless act of violence, no reason or meaning.”

 

“They never caught who did it,” Sara says. A statement, not a question. How does she know that?

 

“No, they haven’t.”

 

Something passes between them then, a trace of connection, and the harshness in her eyes softens.

 

“Anyway, I’m here at the behest of my best friend, who is afraid for my life.” He says it casually, attempting to distract from what he’s said. He hadn’t meant to be so forthcoming.

 

Dr. Saunders leans forward in her chair.

 

“Is that fear warranted?”

 

“No, I’m not nearly brave enough for that.”

 

That wasn’t the right answer, if such a thing existed, and it definitely wasn’t the safe one, but it was the true one. Dr. Saunders stares at him like he’s a question she’s trying to answer, and Rip can almost see her filing away the detail in her mind’s repository. He hates it.

 

The moment stretches in loaded silence. He’d chosen group therapy for a reason. He can’t deal with the intensity, the intimate scrutiny of a solo session. He’d tried that before, right after, and the ensuing disaster still shames him.

 

At last she takes pity on him and turns to Sara.

 

“I’m Sara. Sara Lance. I, uh, lost my sister. Laurel. She was murdered six months ago.”

 

Rip’s head comes up in surprise. He tries to catch her eye, but Sara is looking at her knees, her fingers constantly playing with the gold chain around her neck. She rubs circles on the pendant, and he stares at the soothing movement of her thumb. His hand unconsciously goes to his pant pocket, touches the pocket watch he always carries.

 

Everyone in the room is still looking at Sara, waiting for the rest of the story, the how, the why. But it seems that is all Sara is willing to share at the moment. Rip understands. There are no answers to those questions.

 

The rest of the session goes by in a haze. Rip can barely pay attention. Exhaustion has started to leaden his limbs and his painkillers are wearing off. They discuss something called Going Crazy Syndrome until they are dismissed.

 

When Rip gathers the energy to get up from his chair and go home, mostly everyone else has gone. It is pouring rain outside. The rain pelts forcefully on the ground, raising icy spray that makes him shiver. He keeps forgetting to bring an umbrella when he leaves the house, or to dress properly for the harsh weather.  He’s so used to the convenience of owning a car. He takes shelter by standing flush against the building and hides behind the collar of his coat. It’s not great protection, but he can’t go back inside, as Dr. Saunders has left. Heaven knows how long he’ll have to stand there, whilst the rain subsides. Perhaps he should call a cab.

 

Movement registers in his periphery, startling him. He doesn't do well with things moving in the shadows these days. He’s surprised to see Sara there, in a position much like his, chin tucked into her chest, hands inside the pockets of her leather jacket. She too is underdressed for the weather. Should he acknowledge her presence, say something?

 

A gold sedan pulls up in front of where they’re standing, and Sara kicks herself off the wall and runs toward it. She doesn’t spare him a glance, it was like she’d never even noticed he was there. The sedan drives away and Rip stares at the tail lights grow smaller and smaller in the distance, leaving him alone in the dark.

 

* * *

 

The police ask you to describe what your son looks like and you freeze, you think ‘what does Jonas look like?’ It’s difficult to answer because to you just he looks like Jonas. They ask you what they were wearing and you don’t know. For Jonas, denims. A t-shirt. Like he wears everyday. The electric blue trainers he's so fond of. And your wife? Sir, your wife? I don't know, you say, I don't know. You are without answers. But you suddenly remember that Miranda had asked you to check out a noise her car was making and you'd said you'd do it tomorrow because you were tired. And you tell the police, you say, my wife's car was making a noise. And they say ok sir the way you speak to a child to make them feel important.

 

Then there are hours, days?, of waiting, holding your breath.

 

I am so sorry, they say.

 

You are alone. As alone at that moment as you will ever be in your life.

 

Until the day the sky opens up like a supernova, a blinding light calling you home, and you close your eyes and surrender to its embrace only to be brought back to reality where you are alone, still alone. Still alive.

 

The line between dreams and nightmares blurs.

 

He remembers everything of her save her scent. Seated in a lecture hall with with her beside him. The professor droning on about statistics. The smell of cold coffee. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the prickle of hair through the thin cloth of her cotton skirt. Freeze this frame.

 

In his dream, the recurring one, they are sick and he takes care of them. But he did not take care of them and they died alone somewhere in the dark and there is no dream nor waking world with a different tale to tell.

  


 

 

The grandfather clock chimes 1:30 in the morning and Rip wakes from where he’d fallen asleep on the couch. The den is darkened from all but the glow of the desktop computer. He resists the urge to check the results of the algorithm. It’s been 6 days since he’s checked it. That’s a record.

 

His clothes are still damp from the downpour earlier. They stick to his cold skin. It makes him feel dirty, but not dirty enough to strip, or take a shower.

 

He reaches for the laptop on the coffee table across from him and boots it up. The number indicating his unread emails grows each day. It’s enough to make him anxious. He scrolls past messages from the university and the museum. Mercury Labs messaged him again. Tina Mcgee is persistent, he’ll give her that. Still, nothing from Gideon. Her last email is still the list of therapists she’d sent almost two weeks prior, after their fight. He’d been hoping she would make the first move, but clearly she’d been serious about keeping her distance. It hadn’t even been the worst of their rows.

 

They’d been on their weekly Skype call when Gideon had suddenly started weeping.

 

“Something has to change soon, Rip, because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t watch you wither away like this,” she’d cried all the way from East London, a disembodied head floating on his computer screen. The only significant contact with the outside world he had these days. “Do you think this is what Miranda would have wanted?” she’d said.

  
“I think she would’ve wanted to live,” he’d retorted.

  
“But she’s gone, Rip. They both are, and you’re still here. There’s a reason for that. So figure it out.”

 

He’d been so angry with her he thought he’d never speak to her again. He hadn’t realized how real of a possibility that could be.

 

Rip opens a new message and stares at the blank box. The cursor blinks like the hands of a watch, almost taunting him. He decides he’s going to let it stew there for a while, he’ll have a drink and then decide if he wants to send it.

 

He unlaces his boots and takes off his damp jacket. He goes to the bar at the other side of the den and retrieves a bottle of scotch. He holds it up and the amber liquid glints in the dim light. He’ll get two drinks out of what’s left, three if he can pace himself right. He rummages through the cabinets, but that’s the last of the good stuff. Has he really drank himself through his whole liquor cabinet? He might have to bring out the shitty rum after all.

 

Really, he shouldn’t be drinking at all, what with the painkillers.

 

He catches his reflection on the glass of the cabinets and he flinches. Bollocks. He looks more like an underfed university student than the professor he’s supposed to be. And people saw him like that. He should’ve shaved, if nothing else. At least he’d showered before going. That would have to do.

 

He goes back to the couch with the bottle, forgoing a glass altogether. He stares at the blank email for a while, synchronizes his blinking with that of the cursor until his eyes grow tired. He minimizes the window. The screen background is still a photo of Miranda and Jonas. He can’t bring himself to change it.

 

He brings the bottle to his lips and takes a drink. And then another one. Dr. Saunders had said he needed to give himself permission to feel whatever he was feeling. And with that in mind he brings the computer to his lap and types into the blank email:

 

_I did what you wanted. Will you talk to me now?_

 

So what if that sounds mean? The doctor said it was okay to feel whatever he felt like feeling. He presses send before he has time to consider and regret. A minute later he refreshes the page, hoping to see a reply from Gideon. Nothing. He gives it a few more minutes and refreshes again. Still nothing. Sure, it’s the middle of the morning rush where she is, but she could have written, if she wanted to. Right? He knows she has email alerts on her phone.

 

What if she never responds?

 

He wonders where the anger went and when exactly it was replaced with fear. It took so much to sustain anything these days. The world has shrunk down into parsible parts: bed, shower, clothes, tea, work, scotch. There is no room for anything else.

 

He realizes that until today, he hadn’t spoken to another person aside from Gideon in weeks. And a new terror settles under his skin, something he’s afraid to look at directly. If Gideon deserts him he truly will be alone.

 

He is tired down to his bones, brittle, like too dry clay. The bed beckons him, and he longs to sink into its comfort, but he can’t move himself there.

 

The stairs are ominous, like walking into a tunnel with no light at the other end. He’ll rest on the couch for a spell. Even if it’s murder on his cracked ribs. He’ll just rest his eyes for a second, then he’ll go upstairs. His eyelids flutter closed, heavy and sore. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’ll sleep upstairs.

  
  
  
  



	2. The Mouth of the Beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Thank you to everyone who left feedback on the last chapter. I hope you enjoy this one as much. I know the pace is still a little slow, but bear with me, it picks up next chapter.

Central City is like a perpetual lazy Sunday morning. Its rhythm knocks Sara off balance. Paradoxically, she feels left behind, like she’s rushing to catch up to everyone else’s easygoingness.

 

Sara wakes with the sun. It wasn’t always like that, but she doesn’t sleep much these days. In the mornings, she runs and runs around her mother’s neighborhood while the rest of the world is still asleep.

 

It doesn’t quell her restlessness.

 

In Central City, the streets are clean and the air is crisp. Even in mid January, it's bright and sunny out, if still cold. The houses and buildings are still dressed with the remnants of the holiday season. Sara doesn’t know if it’s just laziness or if Central City is always celebrating. She suspects it’s the latter. When she’s out, strangers on the street don't sidestep, but rather smile at her. That never happens in Star City.

 

People here are too trusting.

 

It is Thursday, nearly evening, and the sun is beginning to descend into the horizon. Sara walks. Her boots clap heavily against the sidewalk pavement-- an angry, dissonant sound. Ahead of her, a child runs away from her mother and bumps into Sara’s knees. Her chubby hands grab fistfuls of Sara’s fur coat.

 

“Fluffy,” she says, all dimples and impish eyes.

 

The child’s mother smiles at Sara, as if this is something that happens everyday. Sara just stares.

 

She walks into the CC Jitters cafe, double checking the street crossing before going in. She looks at the menu board but nothing looks immediately recognizable. Even the coffee names are cutesy. Like a joke she’s not in on. Is that something else you acquire after a while of living here?

 

She orders two of something called a Golden Glider and sits by the window to wait. She’s not there long before the door swings open and her friend Jax walks in.

 

“Jax, over here,” she says, waving to him. She gets up to greet him and her face breaks into a genuine smile.

 

Sara observes the slightly off balance pattern of his walk. It’s subtle enough that some people might mistake it as swagger. But Sara recognizes it for the effect of injury it is.

 

They hug briefly. He’s larger than she remembers. It’d always been easy to mistake Jax for a kid.

 

“You’re looking much better than the last time I saw you,” Sara says, after they’ve taken their seats, gesturing to his leg.

 

“It’s not going as fast as I’d like, but I’m getting there. When’d you get in town?”

 

“Three weeks ago almost.”

 

“Have you been behaving?”

 

“I haven’t broken any laws yet.”

 

Jax rolls his eyes fondly.

 

“We both know that doesn’t mean anything where you’re involved.”

 

Sara allows herself to laugh for a moment. It’s an old bit between them that out of the two of them, he’s the sensible adult despite being years younger.

 

“And what have you been up to?” she asks, and takes a sip of her strange coffee. It’s not bad.

 

“I went back to school. Figured I’d finish that engineering degree.”

 

“Yeah? That’s great, Jax.”

 

There’s a lull in the conversation, which they try to cover up by pretending they’re too engrossed in their drinks. Sara can tell Jax is working up to saying something. She busies herself by tearing her napkin into thin strips. Her right leg bounces up and down. It makes the table shake.

 

“How you holding up?” he finally asks.

 

She’d known the question was coming. It doesn’t mean she knows how to answer it. In the end she just shrugs.

 

“I’m… trying. I’m doing this group therapy thing that my mom basically forced me to go to. Can you believe she actually drives me there and waits for me after? Like, mom, I swear, I’m an adult. I’m perfectly capable to taking care of myself.”

 

She laughs. It sounds hollow, bordering on desperate.

 

“That’s good, though. Therapy’s good. How’s it going?”

 

“I dunno. Is it horrible that I sat there listening to all these people dredge up these terrible stories and all I could think about is when is this going to be over?”

 

It’s not that she thinks their pain isn’t important, or less worthy than hers. It’s just that she can’t take it on. She has been drained of all empathy. All that remains is hunger. And for all she knows, they don’t care about Laurel either. A grieving heart has no room for anything more than its own suffering.

 

Sure, Sara. Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.

 

“I think you should give it a real chance. The change of pace will do you good anyway. It sounds like things were pretty rough for you in Star City.”

 

The mention of Star City makes her bristle.

 

“If it doesn’t work out, you can always stop by the VA. I meet with a group there two times a month.”

 

“Therapy for therapy? No thanks. Besides, that’s not what haunts me.”

 

“Whatever you say, Sarge.”

 

“Let’s talk about something less depressing. Tell me about your love life. I want to live vicariously through you.”

 

“Well, there _is_ this girl at school, but she’s my professor’s daughter.”

 

Sara winces in sympathy and listens to Jax talk about his crush well into the evening until Sara has to go make her meeting.

 

* * *

 

 

“Grief, like death, is transformative,” Dr Saunders says. Or Kendra. Sara’s not sure what to call her yet. She moves back and forth with graceful strides. Sara follows the movement, finding it soothing. Her talk with Jax had left her rattled.

 

She’s always rattled these days. Twitchy. Like she’s too much for her skin.

 

“You will be never be the same as you we were before,” Dr. Kendra continues, “so you shouldn’t try to be. You shouldn’t use who you were as a measure of how well you are doing now. Coming to terms with that is a very important part of the healing process. It’s sometimes tempting to think about wanting to get _back_ to normal, but I find that it’s more helpful to think about it as creating a _new_ normal.”

 

Sara shifts in her chair. She can’t seem to find a comfortable position. Last week the gym had been freezing. Tonight, it feels like a sauna. Or maybe it’s just her.

 

“With that in mind, and after getting to know you all a little last week, I prepared this list of takeaways from the last meeting with regards to your hoped-for outcomes.”

 

Kendra hands a stack of papers to Sara, to pass around.

 

“You all have very different experiences but thinking about what we do have in common, there are three major things we will be tackling together. Number one, meditating reconciliation, whether it’s with someone who is still alive,” and she looks and Iris and Wally, and John and Lisa, “or with the person who has passed,” Kendra looks at Cisco, and Iris, who is sitting next to Cisco, pats him on the knee in solidarity. Sara watches the exchange, and in that moment, Iris reminds Sara of Laurel so much that she has to look away.

 

“We’re also going to work on overcoming anger and defining new roles. Does anyone want to share what has been the most compelling experience you’ve had related to one of these?”

 

There is only silence and then an inhale-- the sound of aborted speech. It’s Iris.

 

“I have trouble with the reconciliation part. You see, I grew up thinking my mother had died when I was a little girl. But my father lied to me. My mother left us, and my dad, he let it happen. And she only came back into our lives when she was sick and already dying. Wally and I only just met. I think about all the time that we lost, and I find it hard to properly grieve her when I’m so angry. Angry at my dad, angry at her for letting it happen. Then I feel guilty for feeling angry. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to break out of that cycle.”

 

Sara had heard words like that before, from Laurel, years ago. They’d been a resentful accusation, a reproach. Not that Sara hadn’t deserved it. A knot forms at the base of Sara’s throat, and she swallows hard around it.

 

“Anyone else wish to share anything?” Kendra says.

 

Sara reaches down for her water bottle but she knocks it over and it rolls away from her. The English guy with the rockstar name leans forward in his chair to catch the bottle and holds it out to her.

 

His eyes are narcotic hazy. She wonders if it's the injuries, or if it's something else. They’re still staring at each other when he begins to speak.

 

“I find that death has stripped me of my titles,” he says. “I’m not a husband anymore, or a father, nor a professor, really. I’m not sure what I am. I know I’m widower, because my wife is dead. But there’s no word for what you are when you lose your child.”

 

Perhaps, there is no word for it because the pain of it is too great. Language becomes inadequate. How to name the unnamable? Sara still struggles to verbalize the emptiness she feels in the wake of her sister’s death. For Sara, it’s been as though she’s lost the other half of her soul. Laurel is like a phantom limb, tangible in its absence. Is that what it’s like for him, too? Like walking around with missing parts?

 

“Thank you Iris and Rip, for sharing. Last week we talked about stages of grief and going crazy syndrome. Tonight we’re going to continue along the same lines and talk about the three main forms of responses to grief. And these manifest in conjunction to the things we talked about last week. And also, these are not mutually exclusive so you may exhibit one or more of these behaviours at any given time.”

 

“Geez, no wonder I’m so tired all the time,” John says. It breaks the tension in the room and everybody laughs.

 

“Yes, exactly!” Kendra says. “Absolutely.”

 

Kendra turns to the easel next to her chair and writes down the three words: avoidant, immersed and incidental.

 

Sara tries to follow along. Really, she tries. But her mind keeps wandering. The kid was right, she’s got nothing to lose by giving this thing a real shot. But it still feels like an exercise in futility. There’s nothing wrong with her or her anger. She’s not dangerous, like her father had said. She already knows how this is going to go: the police will put her sister’s murderer behind bars, and this whole mess will be over. Then she’ll be able to move on.

 

_Are you sure about that?_

 

She dreams of a great white wolf with a mouthful of bloody teeth and some amorphous creature lurking in the dark.

 

Is she the monster of its prey?

 

Sara’s not sure yet.

 

“Did anyone bring photos they would like to share?” Kendra says, breaking Sara out of her daze.

 

They all did apparently. Nice, shiny frames clutched to the chest like precious treasure. Sara surprises herself by raising her hand first, if only to get it over with.

 

She reaches into the inner pocket of her coat. There is a particular photo of the two of them, Sara and Laurel, that seems to be everybody’s favorite. Sara’s father has a copy in his office at the police station. Her mother keeps one at the desk in her home office. There’s another frame with the photo, gathering dust on Laurel’s mantle back in Star City. And then there’s the creased, battered, wallet-sized print Sara carries everywhere she goes. There are other objectively nicer ones, ones that look more like the large, framed portraits everyone else has brought to share, but Sara couldn’t imagine bringing any other photograph.

 

“It’s not big and nice like the rest of yours, but it’s my favorite,” Sara looks at Kendra, seeking her approval. Kendra smiles gently. She has a soothing quality to her that quiets the white noise inside Sara’s head.

 

“Do you want to talk a little about why you feel that way?”

 

Sara sighs and reminds herself Dr. Saunders cannot possibly know how loaded a question she’s just asked. She doesn’t want to answer, not really. She doesn’t want to sit in a circle and talk about her core wounds with strangers who have no right to her pain and her shame. _Then why are you here, Sara?_ says a voice inside her head. It sounds suspiciously like Laurel.

 

The English guy is staring at her again with that old soul stare. She can’t quite figure him out. He seems hidden, even though he’s sitting right there. And yet, today there’s something else, something steely in his stare, vaguely angry. None of the performed compassion she finds so condescending. For her, grief is selfish, and if there is someone in this room who understands what she is feeling, it is him.

 

She finds it easier to speak if she imagines he’s the only one listening. Kendra is looking at her, but Sara is still looking at Rip. She takes a deep breath, looks down at her and Laurel’s smiling faces, and answers, “Because it was the last time things were normal.”

 

“I was 18, Laurel was 21 **.** It was my dad’s birthday. It was the last time we were all together as a family. Not long after this photo was taken, I went on a trip with someone I wasn’t supposed to. And the boat we were on sank in the middle of North China Sea. It took us a while to come home, and all that time, everybody thought we were dead. It really fucked my family up for a long time. And it was all my fault.”

 

The hand not holding the photo comes up to play with the thin gold chain around Sara’s neck. It’d been a gift from her sister, for Sara’s 29th birthday, the last one they would spend together.

 

“But this isn’t about me. So, this is my sister, Laurel.”

 

Sara passes the small photo forward.

 

“Actually, Laurel was her middle name. Her full name was Dinah Laurel, after our parents. But nobody ever called her Dinah,” Sara says, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “She was a lawyer and the most compassionate person I’ve ever met. She lived to help others. I know that’s what everybody says when someone they love dies, like they never did anything wrong when they were alive. But it was true for my sister, always trying to save the world.”

 

But ultimately, it’d been Laurel’s heroism that had gotten her killed. Laurel was ambitious and idealistic. And when she’d transferred to the District Attorney’s office, she’d wanted to make an impact. Which is why she’d chosen to go after the man her predecessors had been too afraid of. She’d gone after Damien Darhk’s human trafficking ring.

 

Laurel wasn’t like Sara. Sara had long ago learned that if trouble always came when you least expected it, then the thing to do is to always expect it. Laurel never expected trouble because she believed that things would work out well in the end, because they should, because it was right and just. Her faith in people was admirable, but it also blinded her. Part of Sara is grateful that her sister’s light was never tarnished, that Laurel never allowed herself to become jaded. But when she thinks about people having taken advantage of that, Sara grows angry.

 

And hungry.

 

The photo makes its way back to her and Sara holds her past in the cradle of her hands like the precious, fragile thing it is.

 

After everyone has shared their photos and stories, Kendra closes the session by asking everyone to describe in one word how they feel after the meeting. Caitlin says she feels thankful, Iris is encouraged. Sara scrambles for the right word, but the only one she can come up with is tired.

 

“Thank you everybody, we will meet next Thursday at 7:00. We are adjourned until then.”

 

Everyone immediately gathers their stuff and leave, creating a symphony of squeaky plastic sounds. Everyone but Rip. It hasn’t escaped Sara how he lingers. He did it last week and he’s doing it again tonight. As if he’s loath to go back home. She’s not sure why she cares. Perhaps it’s because she can see he’s physically, literally, broken. There’s a fragility to him that wakes the protector in her.

 

Sara intentionally dawdles by the refreshments table, helping herself to cookies, just to see what he’ll do. After a minute, he finally gets up.

 

When Sara emerges outside, it is raining, and once again Rip is out there taking cover beneath the eaves. She positions herself a few feet away from him at the wall and waits. Sure enough, a few seconds later she catches him looking at her. She purses her lips in the suggestion of a smirk. It’s funny how such a small gesture can convey so much. Danger, amusement. She makes him nervous. She's used to that. Men often find her intimidating.

 

“You keep staring like that, and you’ll give a girl a complex.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

He’s faking it, clearly embarrassed at being caught, so she doesn’t press it further. She moves closer to him and watches him. He holds his injured wrist to his chest and shivers in his inadequate coat. Sara reaches into her coat and pulls out her flask. She extends it to him and he looks at it for a moment, and then shrugs, as if saying what the hell. He grabs the flask from her and takes a sip. He passes it back and she takes a swig. They turn back to look at the rain.

 

“Does it always rain this much here? I was under the impression Central City was all sunshine and rainbows.”

 

“That’s a common misconception. It is actually quite rainy this time of year. Are you new in town?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

The fucking weather. They’re actually talking about the weather. What a cliche. They pass the flask back and forth once more.

 

“I'm sorry about your wife and son.”

 

She says it to say something, but also because she means it. He stares at her under brooding eyes, like he’s trying to gauge her sincerity.

 

“I'm sorry about your sister,” he offers back.

 

“I'm Sara.”

 

“I know, I can read your name tag.”

 

She huffs out a laugh.

 

“Are you always like this?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“So… direct. I was trying to make conversation.”

 

“Oh.” His cheeks flush so red Sara can see it even in the dark. “I'm afraid I’m not very good at that.”

 

Her face relaxes, the ghost of a smile somewhere there.

 

A  car pulls up into the parking lot, its headlights temporarily blinding them. Sara’s mother waves at her from inside the car, as if Sara couldn’t see her. Sara rolls her eyes and pushes herself off the wall.

 

“That’s my ride. I'll see you next week, English.”

 

“I have a name.”

 

“I know. I too can read, Rip Hunter.”

 

She makes air quotes around his name. There’s no way that’s his real name. She’ll get it out of him before this thing is over.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says.

 

“You tell me,” she responds enigmatically, before getting into the car.

 

 

 

 

“How did it go?” Dinah asks as she pulls into the road.

 

“Fine.”

 

“Just fine?”

 

“What else do you want me to say?”

 

Sara feels like she’s in high school again, mom picking her up to make sure she doesn’t get into trouble. The inside of the car is sweltering. Her mom always keeps the heat too high and Sara rips her heavy coat off.

 

“Sara, I just want to know how you’re getting on. Dr. Saunders helped me a lot, and she can do the same for you, but only if you let her.”

 

“You know what I want? I wish you and dad would stop trying to make me feel bad about how I choose to deal with Laurel.”

 

When they pull into the driveway of Sara’s mom’s house, Sara exits the car before her mother has even finished parking. She goes straight to the kitchen and grabs a beer from the six pack she’d bought that morning. Dinah reaches around her and grabs one for herself.

 

They both lean against the counter, drinking their beer, occasionally looking at each other. Sara thinks maybe she should apologize. Sometimes she forgets she’s not the only one who lost Laurel.

 

“I don’t mean to nag Sara, but did you call the hospital?”

 

“I did. But don’t worry about it, I already found a job.”

 

“You did? Where?”

 

“A club.  I’m bar tending three to four nights a week.”

 

“Sara, don’t you think you should find something more permanent and stable?”

 

Stable is her mom’s favorite keyword of the moment. She’s always dropping it into their conversations.

 

“Why? It’s not like I’m going to stick around here for long.”

 

Her mother sighs.

 

“What, mom?”

 

“I can count on my hands the number of times I have seen you in the past 10 years. I don’t understand what it is you are constantly running away from. And if you stuck around in one place for long enough, you might actually exorcise whatever demon it is you’re carrying around.”

 

The beast inside Sara growls.

 

“Is that what you did, when you ran away from dad and Laurel? Remember, mom, I know your secret. You can’t hold _that_ over me. I’m here for now, that’s gonna have to do.”

 

Sara chugs the last of her beer and walks away. She stops in the archway, her back to her mom still.

 

“I never told Laurel, by the way,” she says over her shoulder. She means for it to hurt. She hears her mother breathe sharply and she knows her hit has landed.

 

“I’m going.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Out. I’m doing what my therapist said to do. I’m being social, making friends, getting out of my head.”

 

* * *

 

Sara said what she’d said to get away from her mom, but she ends up at the club she works at anyway. She flashes her brand new employee badge at the door and the bouncer lets her in. She’s immediately assaulted by neon lights and the searing pulse of techno music and too many bodies. The club is the kind of establishment she used to sneak into with her fake ID in her freshman year of college. It’s exactly the kind of anonymous abyss she needs to lose herself in right now.

 

Her energy is approaching what her father thinks is dangerous. When the anger itches beneath her skin, and if she can’t destroy something, she’s going to sweat it out one way or another.

 

She makes her way to the bar and nods to the bartender, a woman called Shawna. She orders two shots and throws them back in quick succession. The heat from the alcohol sears her throat and traces a path down all the way to the pit of her stomach, instantly calming her.

 

She pushes into the throng of sweaty gyrating bodies until she’s standing in the center. She allows instinct to take over and she dances, moving to the music as if every turn of her hips is a chip of ice dropping into the heat of her anger. She doesn’t know how long she stays there, dancing by herself, lost in a world without thought before her thirst drives her back to the bar.

 

The crowd at the bar is thick and impatient and Sara considers jumping over the counter to serve herself when a woman plants herself next to Sara and looks her up and down in a way that leaves no question as to what she’s there for. The woman places a beer bottle on the counter and slides it over to Sara. Sara looks at the beer, and back the woman. She’s blushing and her breath is uneven. She’s nervous. Sara steps into her personal space, crowding her.

 

“What’s your name?” Sara asks.

 

She looks up at Sara through her thick lashes and says her name is Lindsay. Thing is, Sara knows she’s not faking it-- she’s not coy, she’s just shy. And any other time Sara would be gentle and coaxing, like Lindsay deserves, but she doesn’t have the energy right now. She accepts the drink anyway and not long later she’s leading Lindsay into the crowded dance floor.

 

She wants to warn Lindsey that this is not the place she should come to, that there’s a reason why people come to a club where the music's too loud to carry on a conversation and they let their bodies do the talking.

 

Or maybe Sara’s underestimating her, because Lindsay's hands are on Sara’s skin, soft and warm, sharp nails raking slightly into the flesh of Sara’s lower back. But they feel like bodiless hands despite the warm body of the woman in front of her. Unconnected. Sara looks into Lindsay’s eyes and they look back at Sara’s, then they look at Sara’s mouth, so Sara looks at Lindsay's mouth, then back to her eyes, at her whole face. She thinks, who? Who are you? What’s _your_ damage?

 

She can’t be what Lindsay wants her to be, and she could take advantage anyway, but she won’t. So Sara doesn’t close the gap between them, doesn’t kiss Lindsay like she clearly wants to be kissed and instead turns her around, presses herself against Lindsay’s back and guides their bodies in a sensual dance, chest to back, hips to hips.

 

They dance like that for a while, and it feels nice. Nice enough for Sara to let her guard down, if just for a moment. But then Sara thinks she sees something, or someone, standing there at the edge of the dance floor--- a flash of wheat blonde hair, a familiar jawline breaking into a smile. She breaks free from her companion’s embrace and she follows the spectre through the mass of writhing bodies, weaving through, pushing, shoving, until the moving crowd spits her out and she is standing outside in the club’s back alley.

 

_Where are you?_

 

She looks left, right, but there’s no one there. Just her, just Sara, standing in the impenetrable darkness, beneath the dripping tongue of the sky, the stars glinting like shattered teeth.

 

No, she thinks, not again.

 

A whistle in the wind, a cry, a howl.

 

_Where are you?_

 

The beast approaches.

 

She presses the palms of her hands to her temples and pushes, she pushes, as if she could impel the images out by sheer force of will.

 

The darkness encroaches around her being. Her lungs cave in to the pressure. Her breath falters. She’s smothered, alone, consumed inside the maw of the beast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter Rip and Sara finally spend some actual time together, I promise. The update schedule will probably remain the same for the next few weeks (new chapter on Saturdays). I'm taking the LSAT in a month's time and studying for that is my priority at the moment. Thank you for reading. Let me know what you thought of this chapter!


	3. Yesterday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry I made you guys wait so long for an update, but this chapter thoroughly kicked my ass. Chapter warning: there's a brief discussion of suicide here. Nothing graphic, but thought I'd mention it anyway.

Rip sits in the darkness of his den, illuminated only by the bluish light of the computer screen. It isn’t night time, and he’s opted instead to draw the heavy blackout curtains shut. He’s always found it easiest to be honest in the dark. Even with Miranda. They used to play this game-- tell me a secret--  where they would lie together in total darkness and make confessions, from the playful to the hurtful.

 

On the other side of the screen, and thousands of miles away, is Gideon. There’d been emails and texts exchanged in the past couple of weeks, but this is their first face to face conversation since their fight a month back. Minutes have gone by with scant a word. Rip hates that there’s tension between them. That they’ve somehow forgotten how speak to each other. Gideon is his oldest friend--his only friend, these days. No one knows him like she does.

 

“Sometimes I feel you think it wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t wake up tomorrow,” she says.

 

Gideon’s words land painfully, square on Rip’s chest. For all their simplicity, they feel vicious. He’s speechless, because he has no rebuttal. Gideon has always known how to get inside his head and figure out what he means or feels without him having to articulate it. But she’s not meeting him halfway anymore, instead forcing him to voice his side of the story to get her to understand.

 

He resents her a little for that.

 

“I love you and it would shatter me if I were to lose you, too, but I can't take on the emotional responsibility of keeping you alive. It’s exhausting and it’s not fair.”

 

“I'm not like that,” he snaps.

 

“You mean suicidal?” Gideon’s voice is harsh and direct.

 

“Yes. I'm not _that_.”

 

“You can’t even say the word.”

 

“Gideon, I’m not ready to die.”

 

The words tumble out unbidden, but now that he’s said them, they feel like a confession. Like he’s just peeled back the curtains on himself and discovered something surprising.

 

“I’m not ready to die,” he says again.

 

“Good. Because I’m not ready for you to die, either.”

 

Gideon’s eyes are glassy with unshed tears. They look like two gems in the dark.

 

“Do you understand now, why I did what I did?” she says.

 

“You mean why you abandoned me?”

 

“I did not abandon you, Rip.”

 

“It felt that way.”

 

She sighs. She looks so disappointed. And tired. He feels her slip away again. They’ve lived on different continents for over a decade now, and yet she’s never felt farther away than she feels now.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, so afraid of saying the wrong thing.

 

“I don’t need you to apologize. I just want you to try better.”

 

“I am. I promise. I got help. I’m going to therapy and baring my soul out there in front of perfect strangers every week. Give me credit for that, at least.”

 

“I do. I’m proud of you for that. I really am.”

 

Silence stretches between them again, the seconds marked by the ticking of the grandfather clock.

 

“Have you given any thought to going back to work?”

 

He runs his tongue over his teeth, realizing he'd forgotten to brush them this morning. It isn't the first time.

 

“One thing at a time, please.”

 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to get back to work and feel useful again. He feels dirty enough as it is, living off Miranda’s life insurance payout, like he’s somehow profiting off her death. Simply, he doesn’t know how to. Not after the mess he’d made of it.

 

How is he supposed to handle students and research projects and doctorate fellows and museum exhibitions when it’s often lunchtime when Rip finally pulls himself off the sofa in the den and heads to the kitchen for a sad meal of bread and tea every day? Just the thought of it is enough to drain him.

 

“I don’t know if I can do it again, Gideon.”

 

“Of course you can. I believe in you.”

 

“Well, if you say so, it must be true.”

 

He finally gets a smile from her and for the first time in a month, he feels they will fair alright. They're not there yet, but he's going to fight for it. And he knows she will do the same.

  


* * *

 

 

The metal door to the gymnasium parts open with a heavy clanking sound, halting Dr. Saunders’s welcome speech. Eight heads turn in unison to look at the late straggler: Sara, who clearly meant to sneak inside without drawing too much attention to herself. So much for that. She looks back the door as if it has personally insulted her.

 

She walks with purpose, fists clenched and ready at her sides, as if she’s bracing for a fight. It’s impossible not to look at her, she’s got that kind of magnetic pull that makes her seem larger than she really is.

 

She settles into her usual seat in the circle, the one right across from Rip. Her hair is different today, big and wavy, draped over the side of her face instead of pulled back into a ponytail. It doesn’t stop Rip from immediately noticing a nasty black eye, nor the dried scab bisecting her bottom lip.

 

He frowns at her in question, but there is no answer forthcoming.

 

“Hello Sara, we were just talking about how our week went,” Dr. Saunders says. “How about you? How did your week go?”

 

Sara shrugs, reverting back to the impassiveness of their first week. The doctor is ever patient though, and waits her out. Or maybe Dr. Saunders is pushing. Rip isn’t sure.

 

“It wasn’t my best one,” Sara finally says.

 

“Does that have anything to do with your injuries?”

 

Sara’s body language changes, from embarrassed at being put on the spot to something tense and cautious. She reminds Rip of a predator sending a message: stay away.

 

“I don't want to talk about that.”

 

“Okay, we don’t have to,” Dr. Saunders presses on. “But remember that this is a safe place, if you did want to talk about it.”

 

“I’d really rather not.”

 

“All right, thank you, Sara.”

 

Dr. Saunders’ smile is a little tight, frustrated even. Rip doesn’t blame her. Sara’s been the toughest nut to crack so far. He wonders what Sara’s deal is. Why does she subject herself to something that makes her so obviously uncomfortable?

 

There’s a manic energy around her at all times. Like her mind is in many places at once, and none of those places is ‘here’. There’d been a moment, last week when she’d spoken of her sister, when she looked at peace and engaged. And later when the two of them stood outside and waited for the rain to let up, she’d seemed like a different person to the stoic, angry person she turns into whenever attention is on her.

 

Her anger feels familiar, though. Rip has felt it before. It’s the anger borne of incertitude, no answers, and of fresh pain. Sometimes Rip misses that stage. In the short time they’ve spent together, and admittedly it hasn’t been long, he’s felt like he and Sara have began a tentative connection, forged by their common tragedy. He wants to know her story, and so he thinks he will share his first. Perhaps if he makes the first move, she will follow.

 

He raises his hand and waits for Dr. Saunders to call on him.

 

“I had a breakthrough with my best friend,” he says.

 

“This is the friend you mentioned our first week?” Dr. Saunders asks.

 

“Yes. We had a disagreement a few weeks back. She said some things I didn’t want to hear, but quite frankly, needed to. I was quite cross with her and I said some nasty things and she stopped speaking to me. Which made me angrier at first but then it scared me. I realized that I’d been so caught up in my own pain that I failed to see how I was hurting her. And how I was essentially asking her to enable my bad habits. But we’ve been talking again and I’ve been-- I understand now why she feels the way she feels.”

 

Dr. Saunders gives him a full smile, all dimples and teeth.

 

“That’s really good to hear, Rip. I’m glad for you. Anyone else want to share anything about your experience so far, or something that has helped you deal?”

 

Rip looks to Sara in anticipation, but she tucks her chin into her chest and lets her hair obscure her face. Had he misread the situation? Isn’t this what they do here, talk at each other?

 

Next to Rip, Cisco shifts forward in his chair.

 

“I’ve been writing music,” he says. “Dante was a musical prodigy. When we were kids my mom got us both guitars but I was more interested in taking mine apart to see how it worked. But Dante made it all the way to Carnegie Hall. It was always hard for me to enjoy playing music like that, because that was Dante’s thing and he never hesitated to tell me how much I sucked at it. But I’ve taken to playing the guitar again. It helps me feel close to him, like we’re communicating on another plane or something. I just wish we would’ve had the chance to collaborate on something we both liked.”

 

“It’s those hypotheticals that haunt me the most, too,” Iris says.

 

Guilt and regret abound in the room and the stories come forth from all of them. All the details they can’t let go of, the could haves, should haves and would haves that keep the awake at night. The seemingly insignificant minutia that has become object of obsession in the aftermath.

 

And Rip talks, and talks about his guilt over Miranda having quit her promising career in England to follow him to America, over his long work hours and even the blasted noise on Miranda’s car he never checked out. Each thing he reveals of himself, he does so hoping that Sara will answer with her own story.

 

But she doesn’t.

 

“Before we move on, is there anything else anyone wants to talk about?” Dr. Saunders asks.

 

Caitlin timidly raises her hand.

 

“I’ve been really struggling with anger. I was never prone to it before Ronnie died, but sometimes I feel like there’s this whole other person inside me, clawing to get out. She’s so angry, it’s terrifying. I feel like if I let it out, I won’t be able to control it. ”

 

“Then don’t try to,” Sara says.

 

It’s foolish but Rip is miffed that this is what’s brought Sara out of her shell tonight.

 

“Anger’s like a feral animal you encounter in the forest,” Sara says. “You don’t run away from it, ‘cause if you do, you become prey. You either kneel down and bare your neck or you show your teeth.”

 

“What does that mean?” Caitlin says.

 

“You don’t control anger, you give into it.”

 

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

 

“It’s what’s kept me alive all this time.”

 

Sara Lance is a puzzle and Rip has yet to encounter a puzzle he couldn't figure out, and the pieces that make up her mystery are beginning to take shape.

 

Dr. Saunders gets up from her chair, drawing everyone’s attention back to her.

 

“I think what Sara’s trying to say is that anger can be put to good use. Anger is kinetic, right? The important thing is to learn how to transform the anger into something constructive, instead of destructive. And this goes for any ‘negative’ emotion. The key is to always take that negative energy and put it into something positive. This can be a creative thing, or a new hobby. It can be physical exercise. Some people even start charities in their loved one’s names, bills and laws come out of this process. I’m not saying you have to do anything like that, but even something small, like learning a new craft can make a difference.

 

“We, sort of by accident,” she continues, “ended up discussing something that was on the agenda anyway. And that’s the topic of unresolved issues. Very often these are the biggest roadblock to recovery. How do we ask for forgiveness from someone who isn’t there anymore? What do we do with all the lies or untold truths? As we shift focus toward the future I want to think about these things and what you can do to resolve them. Think about writing a letter to the person you lost where you say all these things. You don’t have to do it right away, it’s not homework, but I do want you to start engaging with those feelings, okay?

 

“We’re at the halfway point of this program already and we’ve spent the past three weeks talking about really painful things and understanding our grief. But at this point I want you to start considering your life after this program. What sort of mechanisms will you employ when an episode hits, what support systems will you continue to build. So, I’m going to pair you up and have you check in on each other sometime midweek. Sara? Why don’t you check in with Rip?”

 

There’s something in Dr. Saunders face and tone of voice that gives Rip pause. Has she picked up on what Rip senses, too?

 

Dr. Saunders adjourns the meeting and the circle breaks apart as people shuffle around to find their assigned partner. Sara, on the other hand, makes a beeline for the refreshments table, and Rip takes the opportunity to approach her.

 

“If you want one of these I suggest you make your move now, because I am starving and these are my fave,” Sara says as she piles chocolate glazed donuts on a paper napkin.

 

Rip makes a disgusted face at the display of gluttony and the corners of Sara’s mouth lift into a smile. Rip’s hand rises toward her face, unconsciously, and his thumb settles ever so slightly over the scab on her lip. He drops the hand quickly, horrified at his forward gesture. Sara looks down toward her lip and then back at him.

 

“You should see the other guy,” she says.

 

The joke doesn’t land though; he’s not laughing.

 

“You’re the one I’m concerned with.”

 

“What are you, my dad?”

 

He takes a step back and breathes deeply.

 

“I’m not anyone’s father.”

 

“Shit, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry, really.”

 

He nods then, accepting the apology.

 

“I guess I should get your number.”

 

She licks the chocolate glaze off her sticky fingers and then dries them off on her jeans before reaching inside her jacket for her phone.

 

“What should I put you down as?”

 

“Rip Hunter?”

 

“Worth a shot.”

 

What is she on about? He dictates his phone number to her and a few seconds later his own phone chirps with an incoming message. Sara looks at him with over exaggerated anticipation so he takes the phone out and opens the message.

 

She’s sent three emojis: a blonde woman waving, a fist and a knife.

 

“What’s this supposed to mean exactly?”

 

“It’s me,” she says.

 

Obviously.

 

The last of the stragglers file out of the gymnasium and Rip and Sara follow them. They don’t take shelter by the building wall, as they’d done the last two times, and instead walk together down the block to the nearest bus stop.

 

The sky is clear tonight, even the stars are peeking through. It is cold though and Rip burrows his hands into the pockets of his coat to keep them warm.

 

“You’re not getting a ride tonight?”

 

“Nope,” she says. “I managed to convince my mother that I could be trusted to secure my own transportation.”

 

Rip senses there’s a story there, but he refrains from asking. “You live with your mother?”

 

“I’m staying with her, for now.”

 

“Ah. I see.”

 

“Fuck. I have no idea how I’m getting through the next five hours. I can barely fucking stand. I’m a bartender,” she clarifies a second later.

 

Sara lets out a long, solemn sigh, closes her eyes and lifts her face up to the sky. Her body sways back and forth in a rocking motion. It’s then he notices how worn out she looks, like the weight of her own self is too much for her to bear.

 

It’s incredibly intimate.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks.

 

“My sister’s case is going to a grand jury tomorrow. The piece of shit hasn’t even been indicted yet and I’m already exhausted.”

 

Rip opens his mouth but no words come out. What can he say?

 

Headlights appear in the distance, as the bus climbs up the hill. Rip strains his eyes to make out the route number.

 

“That’s me. It’s pretty dark and isolated here. I could wait for the next one, if you’d rather not stay alone.”

 

She raises an eyebrow at him.

 

“Right, of course. I’ll be off then. Good night, Sara.”

 

“Night, English. I’ll call you.”

 

He climbs into the bus and settles by a window, looking back at Sara until he can’t make out her shape anymore.

* * *

 

 ****When Rip walks into the Big Belly Burger in University Plaza, Sara is already there, sitting in a booth by herself, stuffing her face with a greasy burger, chewing with gusto. It throws off him for a second; Sara’s always the last to arrive at group.

 

He’d spent two whole days worrying over the phone before she put him out of his misery by calling and suggesting they meet here for lunch. He almost turned her down. CC University campus is only two blocks away, and the restaurant is a popular lunch hangout for students and faculty alike. He’s terrified of running into someone who remembers him from before. But isn’t the whole point of going to therapy to start reclaiming his life, moving on and being a functional person again?

 

He settles across from Sara in the booth and she halts her enthusiastic eating to slide a basket of fries his way.

 

“I didn’t know what you liked so I got you these,” she says.

 

“Thanks.”

 

The scab on her lip is gone. It’s left behind a light patch of new skin on her lip. But the purple bruise around her eye has started to yellow. Her hair is greasy and tangled in the messiest of buns at the top of her head.

 

“You look awful,” he says before he can really process it, immediately turning red in embarrassment. But to his surprise Sara just laughs.

 

“So do you,” she says and he laughs too. When was the last time he did that?

 

“I am so sorry, Sara, I did not mean to say that out loud.”

 

“Don’t be. It’s refreshing. I’m sick of people acting like I’m a bomb about to go off if they breathe wrong around me.”

 

As the laughter dies out, silence settles in. Rip picks at his fries, if only to keep his hands occupied.

 

“This is weird, right?” Sara says.

 

“A tad.”

 

Sara fidgets with the myriad rings around her fingers and his eyes are drawn to the movement, which she notices.

 

“They were my sister’s. She was obsessed with them, she had dozens. I wasn’t much for accessorizing before. Perils of the job I guess. But now that she’s gone…” she trails off.

 

He silently reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket for his pocketwatch. He opens it. He touches Jonas’ face first, then Miranda’s before placing the watch on the table between them. Sara takes it and carefully cups the watch in the palm of her hand.

 

“He looks like you.”

 

It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before but it doesn’t stop him from feeling fatherly pride.

 

“What kind of job would impede you from accessorizing? I thought you said you were a bartender?”

 

She smiles and it looks almost grotesque, what with her split lip and black eye.

 

“I was a soldier. Sergeant First Class Lance, at your service.”

 

A puzzle piece slots into place and the picture becomes clearer.

 

“A soldier. Now _that_ makes more sense. What did you do there?”

 

“I was military police. Deployed to Iraq in ‘09. And then Afghanistan in 2012. I mostly trained other soldiers in martial arts. Did some cultural outreach with Female Engagement Teams. I was a field medic for one mission, but that mostly because I was the only one in the platoon with any medical training and we were caught in the middle of an ambush. I really wanted to go into Special Forces, and I would’ve been damn good at it, too, but they don’t let women do that. I mean, technically they _can_ now, but… Before I left I’d been tapped to join this experimental coed program with the Ranger Academy.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“My sister called me. She said she missed me.” Her voice changes when she speaks of her sister, taking on a wistful, caring tone. “My enlistment was was almost up and I had every intention of reenlisting, going to the Ranger Academy to make military history. And then Laurel called, and I knew I had to come home. We’d fought the last time I was home on leave. One of those ugly fights where you say the one thing you know is going to hurt the most.”

 

“Where you close?”

 

“Like twins. But it wasn’t always like that. We really had to work for it. Do you remember what I said in group about me going on a trip with someone I wasn’t supposed to?”

 

“You said your boat sank?”

 

She nods.

 

“That someone was my sister’s boyfriend. And that’s how she found out we were screwing around behind her back. It was the stupidest mistake I’ve ever made and I’ve got plenty to choose from. When we came home after being rescued, she refused to speak to me, and I figured I deserved it, so I let her.”

 

The bell above the door jingles when a group of students come in. Rip thinks he recognizes some of them, but he’s not sure. He tries to make himself disappear into the seat anyway.

 

“Are you okay?” Sara asks. “You keep looking around.”

 

“I used to teach at the University.”

 

“We don’t have to stay here if you’re uncomfortable.”

 

He thinks of what Gideon would say. Something like, show your backbone, Hunter. In the end he decides he’s been brave enough today.

 

“My house isn’t too far,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Doubt settles in the pit of Rip’s stomach the moment Sara parks her mother’s car in front of his house. No one but him has been in there for a year, but he can’t exactly backtrack now.

 

The mangled hunk of metal that used to be Rip’s car sits out in the driveway. Sara whistles as they pass by it.

 

“That would explain the cracked ribs,” Sara says.

 

Rip stops in the doorway, key halfway turned in the keyhole.

 

“How did you know about that?”

 

“You favor your right side. You also have a broken wrist, obviously, ‘cause of the brace. And your nose looks recently healed.”

 

He nods.

 

“Impressive.”

 

“I know my injuries,” she says, like it’s something she’s inordinately proud of.

 

He opens the door and immediately the stale smell of an unclean home becomes apparent. Stepping outside himself for the first time in months, he sees his house as she would see it, and what he sees embarrases him. He takes out the rubbish dutifully, but he can’t remember the last time he dusted, let alone actually cleaned the house. Sara doesn’t say anything, but there’s no way she can’t notice the signs of neglect. They’re all so obvious to him now.

 

He takes Sara’s jacket and hangs it on the rack by the door, between Miranda’s grey trench coat, and Jonas’ orange windbreaker.

 

He leads her to the kitchen to make good on his offer of coffee from Miranda’s expensive machine. The three bottles of scotch he’d just bought are still on the counter and so are the dishes from three days ago, and the crumbs from the toast he had this morning.

 

Sara sits on a stool at the kitchen island and Rip stuffs his head inside the cupboard, shuffling packets around, searching for those blasted pods. Where had they gone? They’d have to be around somewhere. He certainly hadn’t drank them. They’re probably stale by now, like the only biscuits left in the cupboard.

 

“I’m sorry. My wife was the coffee drinker in the house. Just give me a moment, I’m sure those pods will turn up somewhere.”

 

“Actually, you know what I’d kill for? A glass of that scotch you got there.”

 

Rip’s ears heat in shame. He’s glad his head is still inside the cupboard. He feels the need to explain himself. Because surely, she’s poking at him, calling him out. When he looks at her, though, there’s no judgment on her face. There’s nothing and he sighs in relief.

 

“I can do that.”

 

He pours them each a drink in the cut glass tumblers Miranda had gifted him for their third wedding anniversary.

 

“May I ask something personal?” he says.

 

“Go ahead. Isn’t that why we’re here for?”

 

“Why do you go to therapy if you obviously hate it?”

 

“Why do you?”

 

“To get better. Why else would I?”

 

“Because your friend made you.”

 

“Fair enough. Maybe at first but it's not like that anymore.”

 

“My mom went to see Dr. Saunders a couple months back, and she strongly suggested I do the same. She thinks I'm too angry, and that scares her. But she doesn’t understand. I can’t let go. If I do, it'll mean I've given up.”

 

Rip nods. He understands. He'd been angry for a long time, until he wasn't. And the day he stopped being angry was the day he gave into despair. Life had spiraled out of control after that.

 

“About the car…”

 

“You don’t have to tell me.”

  
“I want to.”

 

He’d talked about it to Dr. Saunders, only in the vaguest of manners, when they first spoke on the phone prior to the first group meeting. Gideon knew all the details. Other than that, he hadn’t opened up to anyone about what had happened that morning a month ago now. Not that he has anyone else to open up to. Until now.

 

He drains the last of the scotch in the glass and takes a steeling breath.

 

“About a month back I went for a drive very early in the morning, or very late at night. The sun wasn’t up yet. I wasn’t driving anywhere in particular, I just wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t _here_. I’d been driving a while when the sun finally came up. And you know sometimes when the sun peeks through the clouds and it’s so bright it blinds you? I looked into the light and I saw… well, I saw them, Jonas and Miranda.”

 

If he closes his eyes, even now, he can see them still, whole and alive, holding their arms out to him.

 

“I know, intellectually, that it wasn’t real. I was sleep deprived and quite frankly, inebriated. But I saw them and they were calling to me. So... I drove into the light. I woke up sometime later with a bloody face and stabbing pain in my side, alone and alive.”

 

He leaves the rest unspoken, but still present between them. Sara looks at him for a long time, long enough to make him feel uncomfortable. He feels like an open book to her, all his story spread out and legible around them. In contrast, Sara remains careful, ever deliberate in what she chooses to reveal. It unnerves him.

 

“My dad’s a cop, right? A captain, actually.”

 

Rip startles slightly at Sara’s abrupt change in topic, but he listens, sensing she’s trying to make a point.

 

“And my sister Laurel was the model citizen who followed all the rules and did all the right things. I was the delinquent of the two of us, which, of course, pissed my dad off to no end. Why can’t you be more like Laurel, Sara? I can’t tell you how many times I heard that when we were growing up. After Laurel died, I had trouble sleeping, so I took to walking around The Glades at night. The things you see down there, they can haunt you, if you let them. It’s where Laurel was killed. So one night, I’m walking like I do every night, and I see this girl being pushed into an alley, clearly against her will. I can’t just walk away, so I interfere. I pushed the guy around a bit, scared him off and then I helped the girl file a report. And that was that. Except it happens again a few weeks later. And again. Different girl, same shit. It goes pretty much the same way every time. Until it doesn’t. About a month ago I saw a girl-- and she was a _girl_ , Rip, 15 at _most_. She was shaking and crying and she was bruised. She could barely speak English and I just knew she was one of Damien Darhk’s girls. The same girls my sister died trying to save. And there’s this big guy towering over her, touching her everywhere. And I just lose it. I beat that guy to a bloody pulp. I had a knife on me. I didn’t use it, but he saw it. So he decides he wants to press charges against me. So you can imagine the scandal, right? Police captain’s daughter, the vigilante menace. So my dad says, Sara, I can make this go away, but you need to go away and get some help. Two days later I was on a train to Central City. So you see, you're not the only one who's fucked up.”

 

He’s half in awe, half horrified by her story, to think of her taking on dangerous men alone with nothing but her physical strength. She becomes more of an enigma with every new detail he learns. And yet, despite the horror of her story, he feels something ease inside his chest.

 

“That sounds terrifying. How can you do that?”

 

“Because no woman should ever suffer at the hands of men.”

 

He couldn’t argue with that.

 

“And your face?” he asks.

 

“I picked a fight with someone who hit back.”

* * *

 

 

“What happened to them?” Sara asks. She’s looking at the photos of Jonas and Miranda that hang on the living room wall.

 

“Like I said before, police determined it was a mugging gone wrong.”

 

“But you don’t really believe that.”

 

He hesitates, knowing what people think of his theories. It only serves to make Sara more curious.

 

“They were shot, point blank in the  heart. When they found them, Miranda still had her handbag, but she was missing her watch. I gave her that watch for our first wedding anniversary. It was engraved. Her mobile had been smashed to bits, her ID was missing, but not her wallet. There wasn’t any cash in the wallet, but I honestly can’t say if she’d been carrying any in the first place. It would have been easier if he just took the handbag. It’s almost like he took the one thing he knew meant the most. Like a trophy.”

 

“Trophy’s a loaded word, though. You think a serial killer did this?”

 

“I don’t know. And that’s what vexes me, Sara. I don't know anything. I know it sounds far fetched when you say it, and I’m not implying that’s what happened. I only believe that perhaps it’s not as simple as the police seem to think it is. They’ve all but given up on the case.”

 

He pauses for a moment, considers what he's thinking about doing.

 

“Can I show you something strange?”

 

Sara shrugs.

 

He takes her to the back of the house, to his den. His blankets and pillows are still piled on the sofa. He’d forgotten all about those. She notices them but thankfully doesn’t ask about it.

 

He wakes the desktop computer and pulls up Gideon’s software and lets the algorithm do its job. Sara stands behind him, watching. A map of Central City and its immediate border cities appears on the screen. Dots of various colors populate the map, with lines connecting between them.

 

“These are incidents with common details to my family's murder, perpetrated during the last five years.”

 

“This is really thorough.”

 

“I have a friend who is essentially a living computer. She coded this algorithm, and it combs through news and police reports.”

 

“Impressive. Wait, did you say police reports?  How did you get those?”

 

“We may have hacked into a database or two.”

 

He'd expected her to give him grief over it, but she seems impressed.

 

“So are you ready to run for the hills screaming about how crazy I am yet?”

 

“Nah. Trust me, it takes a lot to spook me.”

 

“I’m not saying I want them to have died this way. I’m only---I don’t know what I’m doing.”

 

“You’re trying to make sense out of the insensible. Nothing wrong with that. I have to remind myself every day that Laurel died for something noble. Otherwise I would lose it.”

 

He’s about to ask for details when Sara’s phone rings.

 

“Oh, fuck. It’s my mom. I was supposed to pick her up from campus 20 minutes ago. I’m sorry, I have to go.”

 

He follows her to the foyer and helps her into her jacket as best he can with the wrist brace in the way.

 

“This was good. I’m glad we did it,” she says.

 

“Me too. Drive safely.”

 

“I will. I’ll see you Thursday.”

 

He walks back into the house, feeling lighter than he did this morning. On a whim, he goes into the garage. His workshop is exactly as he’d left it months ago, the last time he’d been in here. The tools and parts are all out on the worktable, as if suspended in time.

 

He sits on the bench and picks up an antique timepiece from the table. It's dusty, but otherwise in good condition, despite its age. He grabs a magnifying glass from the toolbox and proceeds to take the time piece apart. He loses himself to the familiar process of cleaning and oiling and sanding, screwing and tweaking, putting it together and breaking it apart again, until he carefully drops the last gear in place and waits. And then tick tock; the hands of time move forward, on and on again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will try to keep to my once a week update goal, but as we saw this past week, sometimes it might take a bit longer, because I want to put out my best. My test date is also getting closer, so that might also affect things, especially as these chapters keep getting longer. As always, let me know what you thought of this chapter. Until next time!


	4. How to Live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is brought to you by Hurricane Irma. I meant to update a lot sooner, as in last week, but a natural disaster happened. It was out of my hands. We're all okay here, but still dealing with the aftermath of the storm. I hope you enjoy this update. I did something different with the POV here, let me know how it reads, please!
> 
>  
> 
> **EDIT 9/18/2017: Another major hurricane is coming my way in 2 days time. I cannot predict what will happen. The next update will come when it comes. :/**

 

 

Stormy clouds roil and battle in the sky in a meteoric power play, casting Central City in muted grey. It’d snowed last night, big fat flakes that looked more like cotton balls than ice crystals. The snow hadn’t stuck, though, and by mid-morning icy slush puddles on the streets. Sara tries to avoid the slosh as best as she can as she walks home from the store, carrying two canvas bags full of groceries. She could’ve made it easier on herself and taken her mom’s car, but she’s discovered that she likes the walking. 

 

Walking alone during the height of day, to be another body disappearing anonymously into the throng, emptied of everything, to be simultaneously present in life, and outside of it. It’s become Sara’s favorite feeling. The constant movement keeps her from dwelling on things she'd rather not think about.

 

She stops at a crosswalk, and notices the building on the opposite side of the street is graffitied-- nothing ornate, just thin lopsided letters spelling out ‘time doesn’t exist, clocks exist.’ She immediately thinks about Rip and his house full of old clocks. He’d probably correct her, point out that they’re not old, Ms. Lance, they're antiques.

 

He’s never called her Ms. Lance, but he seems to be the kind of guy who would, if she hadn’t forced a familiarity between them.

 

Her overtures had surprised even her. Sara doesn’t trust men easily, hasn’t since The Gambit, but something about Rip is inviting, like she knows him already. 

 

She does know parts of him, intimately, because they are also her parts. It's the kind of connection she shares with the other soldiers in her platoon. The kind of connection she shares with Oliver-- common life experience.

 

Rip’s contradictions intrigue her. He seems a man out of time, sometimes so modern in the way he appears so self aware, others like he belongs to a time long past. There’s a quiet strength beneath his pain. Or perhaps forged from it. Sara sees it. She and him are kindred spirits. And people like them do more than just survive, they endure, even when everything inside is willing itself to expire.

 

She hangs one of her bags from her shoulder and shuffles the other bag around so she can snap a photo of the graffiti with her phone before the light changes and she’s forced to move on with the rest of the crowd.

 

Maybe she'll show Rip sometime.

 

When she gets home ten minutes later, Sara takes off her boots at the door, preemptively avoiding her mom’s lectures about tracking water into the house. She'd left her mother grading papers in her office, but the office is empty when Sara looks into it on her way to the kitchen.

 

“Oh there you are,” Sara says, after seeing her mom sitting at the tiny breakfast table, her back to the kitchen’s entrance. “They were out of the specific almond milk you asked for, so I bought another one. I hope it’s okay.”

 

There is no answer from Dinah. She just sits in disquieting stillness. Sara sets her bags down on the floor and walks around the table, curious.

 

Dinah stares at the phone clutched in her hands with a far off gaze. Sara calls her name and she finally looks up. The look on her face is the scariest look Sara's ever seen on her. She looks old, reduced down. Sara doesn't have words for it, other than surrender. It triggers Sara's instincts and her pulses surges.

 

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

 

“Grand jury came back. Insufficient evidence. No probable cause. No indictment.”

 

For a second, Sara doesn't understand what her mom is saying. She'd forgotten about the grand jury. How could she have forgotten? She repeats the words in her head, but that doesn't help with making meaning out of them either.

 

“What? I don’t-- But he did it,” she finally says. Even to her ears she sounds like a child, incapable of processing complex situations. How could the grand jury not see what she sees? How can they say the man who killed her sister shouldn't face trial for what he'd done?

 

To not even be given the chance...

 

Dinah takes in a hiccuping breath, her face crumples and a sob tears from her body. The sound is inhuman-- a sustained primal wail that hits Sara straight in the pit of her stomach. She wants to cover her ears, shut it out.

 

Sara feels something pressing against her chest. Something strong and scary. Is trying to crush her? Is it trying to get out? Her head swims and the world halves at the seam, slipping out the edges of Sara’s vision. Her hands shake.

 

This is not the way things were supposed to go.

 

“What did dad say? And who was the idiot prosecutor who went to a grand jury with insufficient evidence? For fuck’s sake, Laurel was one of them!”

 

“They went to a grand jury to compel testimony. You know this, Sara. No one talked.”

 

And no one will. There's not a damn person of interest in that case who isn't on Damien Darhk’s payroll.

 

Sara could make them talk, if given the chance.

 

“What happens now?” Sara says.

 

Dinah shakes her head.

 

Sara knows this will only end one way.

 

The pressure inside her reaches its peak and out it bursts. She kicks the chair across from her. It clatters to the floor with a loud crack and Dinah jumps. The look on her face, Sara’s seen it before: it’s fear.

 

“Sara, please don’t do anything stupid.”

 

The air feels turbulent, like water after in the wake of a furious propeller.

 

“Like what, mom?” Sara says, and her voice sounds so small and young, like what Sara used to sound before the ocean and the jungle and the desert each took a turn ravaging her spirit. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

 

||

 

Sara remembers. She remembers the thick swirl of dust so dense you could only see red. She remembers the smell of blood in the air, the coppery taste of it under her tongue. She remembers the chaos that felt both endless and fulminant. She remembers how she’d marveled at the sound of RPGs, so loud, reverberant, nothing at all like fireworks. She hadn't felt fear, not then. Her hands had been steady on the rifle even if her heart had fluttered like a mad caged bird.

 

But it’s the moment between the  _ during  _ and the  _ after _ that is scariest. That moment when the last explosive has been thrown and you wait, wait, wait, you hurt your ears with listening, trying to pick out any movement from the other side. 

 

That silence she can't forget-- absolute and limitless in the desert. The desert had a way of distorting reality, making everything feel augmented.

 

That’s what she feels like now, like the last explosion has gone off and she’s hiding in the trench holding on to her weapon and not knowing what to do.

 

Behind her, the patio door opens and Dinah comes out. She sits next to Sara on the concrete steps. Their knees touch. Dinah's face looks scrubbed red, but the underlying swelling from too much crying is still there.

 

“Your father called. He wanted me to relay a message. He says you are forbidden to step foot in Star City for the next few weeks. He understands that you’re upset, but you cannot show your face around there.”

 

“And what do you say?”

 

“I agree with him.”

 

“What is it exactly you're so afraid I’m going to do?”

 

“Sara, it’s not what  _ you''ll  _ do we’re worried about,” Dinah says like she can’t understand why Sara doesn’t know. “Your father sent you here because he’s terrified. We both are. Damien Darhk already got one of our daughters killed and then you went and drew attention to yourself by antagonizing one of his guys.”

 

“He deserved it.”

 

“Maybe so. But I'm not willing to lose another daughter for that. And when you get like  _ that _ ,” Dinah points back to the house with a thumb, “I feel like I don’t know you, and I miss you.”

 

“But I’m right here, mom.”

 

“Are you?”

 

“It’s funny you should say that. You know, the way you look at me sometimes, it’s like you were expecting someone else to walk through the door.”

 

“Oh, Sara.”

 

Dinah grabs one of Sara's hands between both of hers. She touches Laurel’s rings, chuckles slightly at the one that says ‘fuck’ in pretty cursive letters. That one is Sara’s favorite. Laurel had had large hands, with long elegant fingers. Sara has her mom’s hands, strong yet slightly small.

 

“You remind me so much of myself, Sara. We have more in common than you think. Maybe one day I'll tell you about it. I wanted better for you. I didn't want you to grow up carrying so much regret, so much anger.”

 

Sara thinks that would've been nice. But she's spent enough time ruminating on what ifs to know nothing good comes out of it. She better than anyone understands she can't go back, change the past. The only thing she can do is keep on living.

 

“Someone asked me recently if Laurel and I were close, and I immediately said yes, like twins,” Sara says. “I guess I said that because that’s the way I like to remember it. It doesn’t feel good to think about what it was like between us when we were growing up.”

 

Sara picks up a twig from the ground, draws figure eights on the wet soil. She thinks about all the micro aggressions she and Laurel had inflicted on each other, small and swift, yet stinging, like paper cuts. Nothing to be done about it now. They’d moved past them. Or maybe they’d just chosen to ignore it all, start all over.

 

“We really tried, you know,” Sara continues. “When she died, there wasn’t much about each other we didn’t know. We’d said it all. And you know what we discovered when we actually talked? Turns out we both grew up believing the other one was the favorite daughter.”

 

Sara peels the bark back on her twig, exposing the gooey insides. She lets the admission sink in. Dinah doesn’t say anything. Sara doesn’t know what she was expecting. Still, Sara needs to explain herself.

 

“Laurel was the good kid, the one you and dad got to be proud of for her accomplishments. I was so jealous of her. Perfect Laurel. So I acted out, to get your and dad’s attention. And you gave it to me! No matter what I did, you just forgave. Which made Laurel feel like nothing she ever did was good enough.”

 

“Is this the part where you blame me for your life going wrong?” Dinah says.

 

“No. I did, at one point, but  _ I  _ got on that boat. It wasn’t your job to stop me.”

 

Sara remembers. She remembers that July evening almost a decade ago now: her mom coming home early, catching her in the middle of packing her bag for her ill-fated trip on that damned boat. Her mom had been wearing a blue dress. Her hair was curly. Her lipstick had faded, leaving behind the dark ring of her lip liner. These are the details still imprinted on Sara’s memory.

 

That evening is the secret they both carry. A thread that connects them in betrayal. And the reason Dinah's always been quick to come to Sara's defense. To condemn her would mean condemning herself.

 

“Do you want to know why I did it?” Sara says.

 

“You said you were in love. That you had to follow your heart, even if nobody else thought it was right. Like I’d done, once upon a time.”

 

A dry laugh comes out of Sara. “Yeah, I did say that. You know what else? I wanted to hurt her.”

 

“Oh, Sara.”

 

Sara dusts her hands off and gets up to go back inside the house. She stops in the doorway, and turns to look at her mom.

 

“All her life she got screwed over, why did we expect her death to be any different?”

 

Sara crosses the threshold, and the screen door squeaks closed behind her. On the other side Dinah sits on the concrete steps, and stares at what’s left of the snow.

 

* * *

 

 

Rip stands at the base of the stairway.  He looks up into the dark hallway and he grips his bundle of pillows and blankets tighter until his left wrist twinges in discomfort. He flexes it, first forward and then back. Full mobility still feels strange.

 

What lies beyond the stairs feels unknowable, like the other end of a wormhole. Yet, he’s determined to make it up there today. 

 

He has to. 

 

He’d been by to see the doctor in the morning for his post accident checkup. The broken wrist had healed nicely and the brace was able to come off. His ribs are another story. The doctor had subjected Rip to a battery of questions as to what exactly he’d been doing to strain them further, until he’d relented and admitted he slept on the sofa every night. He’d had to tell Gideon, too, who has been keeping close tabs on his healing progress. Admitting it to her had been more difficult than he’d expected. It seems that with every step forward they take in repairing their relationship, he still manages to disappoint her somehow.

 

If he’s honest with himself, however, and he’s trying to be these days, he’s relieved someone else has taken the decision off his hands.

 

He takes a deep breath and climbs onto the first step, one foot, then the other and so on until he’s finally upstairs. It’s not like he hasn’t been up here since they died. That would be absurd. When was the last time he came up here with the intent of staying, though? That detail eludes him.

 

Jonas’ door is the first on the right, and Rip turns his head when he passes it, avoids looking at the block letters spelling out Jonas’ name in blue and orange on the door. He continues down the hallway, eyes fixed on the endgame. 

 

When the reaches the door to his room, he doesn’t give himself the time to second guess anything, and turns the knob. 

 

Aside from the dust and the musty smell that comes from neglect, everything is as he remembers it: the lace curtains from the seamstress in Nottingham; the photo of the three of them from their vacation to Dublin; The Indus Valley fertility idol Miranda had brought back from an expedition. The antique vanity is also still laid out just as Miranda left it the last morning she sat down to do her makeup: brushes and lipstick bullets still lie haphazardly on the surface.

 

Rip picks up the bottle of Miranda’s favorite perfume-- Florence by Tocca-- and sprays it in the room. The floral notes (jasmine, bergamot and gardenia) settle in the air and a flood of memories awash him, enough to steal the breath from him. He’d forgotten the scent of her.  

 

He lays on Miranda’s side of the bed and puts his nose to her pillow. He fills up his lungs with air, trying to breathe in her memory. But the sheets don’t smell like her presence. They haven’t for a long time. Only his memory of it remains. 

 

When the tears come, he doesn’t try to stop them and he weeps into Miranda’s pillow until he’s dry.

 

The hours pass uncounted and Rip lays on the bed, face up, trying to discover shapes in the stucco ceiling.

 

His phone rings and the noise startles him, so loud in the small room. He picks it up, confused by the fact that it won’t stop ringing. It’s a call. Nobody calls him anymore. The name Eve Baxter flashes across the screen. Why would his old colleague be calling, now of all times? What could she possibly want of him? She must know about the forced sabbatical. He’s curious about what she could want, but not curious enough to answer the call. He lets it ring until eventually the phone stops and a minute later it chirps once more with a voicemail alert. 

 

He taps his way into his voicemail, puts the phone on speaker and listens to the message:

 

_ “Hi Rip, it’s Eve. I hope you’re well. Gosh, it’s been ages since we talked. Anyway, I was calling because we just acquired a piece for the museum that it’s in need of major restoration. You know you’re the only one I’d trust with it. I was hoping you’d come in to take a look? We all miss you here. Anyway, please call me back when you get a chance. Take care.” _

 

Cheeky Eve neglected to mention exactly what artifact they’d acquired, obviously hoping it’d entice him to call and find out.

 

Slim chance of that.

 

A few minutes later the phone beeps again, this time with a text message. When exactly did he become a coveted conversation partner? He picks up the phone from the bedside table and looks at the screen. He sits up, surprised. It’s a message from Sara Lance. 

 

> **_From Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ my workout partner bailed on me today. u up for it? _

 

Rip reads the message twice. Is she having him on?

 

> **_To Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ You have seen me. What about me exactly makes you think I’d be fit for the job? _

 

Three new messages come in rapid succession.

 

> **_From Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ pls? :( _
> 
> _ i’m trying to transform my anger into something constructive _
> 
> _ :) _

 

Her last message coaxes a chuckle out of him. Her irreverence is refreshing. He only vacillates for a moment, looking around the room, and thinking about all he still has to do if he wants to make this room habitable again. If he goes he won’t have to deal with it until later.

 

He picks up the phone and writes out his answer.

 

> **To Sara Lance:**
> 
> _ Just text me the address. _

* * *

 

 

The place Sara sends him to turns out to be the Veteran’s Affairs Rehabilitation Center in the downtown area. Getting in had required a visitor’s badge and everything.

 

When Sara had said workout, Rip had pictured treadmills and elliptical machines. Maybe some weights. But there’s none of that. When Sara said workout she meant fight training. 

 

Just as he’d predicted, Rip hadn’t provided much in terms of partnership, other than an audience. For over an hour now, he’d watched her beat the daylights out of a punching bag with real fury. The way she’s been going at it though, the visceral intensity of her strikes, tells him she has an ulterior motive for calling on him specifically.

 

Still, it’s breathtaking to watch her. She fights the way a dancer moves, graceful and precise, ever deliberate in her strikes. Seeing the power of her body is mesmerizing. Sara is ridiculously strong. He no longer wonders how she took on those men by herself. But also, she’s going at a brutal pace, like she’s punishing herself for something.

 

“Okay, that’s enough,” Rip says.

 

Sara swings one last punch and hugs the punching bag to make it stop moving. He hands her a towel and a bottle of water.

 

“You haven’t done anything,” she says, panting.

 

“I know. I’m exhausted just looking at you.”

 

His eyes wander over her, up and down, over the sweaty sheen on her strained muscles. She’s freckled all over, even on her chest. Rip’s always had a thing for freckles. She reaches her arms up, stretching, and he notices she has a tattoo on the underside of her left bicep-- a black and yellow bird in flight, its spread wings wrapped around Sara’s arm. Rip’s mind is going places he’s not ready to go and so he averts his eyes, looks at his shoes instead. 

 

“You’re really good at that, though,” he says. 

 

“I know.”

 

“You ever consider teaching that for a living?”

 

“Boxing?”

 

“Self-defense.”

 

“Can’t say I have.”

 

“Maybe you should. Turn your anger into something constructive. And get paid for it.”

 

“You’re an asshole, you know that right?” she says, and she throws her sweaty towel at him.

 

“I do know that, in fact. But I was being serious. You obviously have this mission to protect women. You don’t have to go outside the law to do that.”

 

She groans and rolls her eyes.

 

“You sound like my dad.”

 

“That would be the second time you’ve compared me to your father. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

 

He thinks he detects a slight blush on her cheeks, but it's hard to tell. She’s flushed all over from her workout. 

 

“I’m going to shower. Wait for me here. I’ll buy you dinner before group tonight.”

* * *

Sara says Chinese is her favorite, so Rip suggests they go to his favorite dim sum spot only a few blocks away from where their group meets.

  
  
“You want to tell me what’s really going on with you?” Rip asks.

  
  
Sara frowns into her noodle bowl.

  
  
“You didn’t need me to come all the way down here just to watch you punch things. So, out with it.”

  
  
“Wow. Is that your teacher instinct or your father instinct?”

  
  
“A bit of both, actually. I find they’re one and the same, really.”

  
  
Sara takes a steamed bun from the basket between them and tears into bite sized pieces.

  
  
“Remember how I mentioned last week that my sister’s case was going to a grand jury? It didn’t go well.”

  
  
Sara takes a sip of her cola, and then launches into her story, all the way from the beginning. She tells him about a man called Damien Darhk-- the man who ostensibly controls Star City. Rich, powerful and charming, he’s got his thumb into every venture in the city, both the licit and the underground. The way she describes him, all icy looking, like a great white wolf, she says, it makes him sound like an evil creature from a nightmare.

  
  
“He’s in the import/export business, if you get what I mean,” she says. “Drugs, weapons, girls. There's a lot of darkness in Star City and he’s responsible for most of it. He’s got so many cops on his payroll, they turn a blind eye.” 

  
  
Sara’s sister had gone after him, especially for the girls. At the time of her death, she was well on her way to building a credible case against him.

  
  
“She rattled him, and he killed her,” Sara says. “I think the he did it cause he could, to send a message. A guy like that is hard to prosecute, no one wants to be the one to turn on him. But it’s not like the DA’s office can sweep Laurel’s murder under the rug, either.”

 

She looks out the window and Rip can see toll of it etched on her face. Maybe he’s lucky, in some twisted way, that he hasn’t had to deal with this ugly part.

 

“I’m afraid that the prosecutor took the case to a grand jury now on purpose, to throw the case. Is that stupid?”

  
  
“No. If this Damien Darhk person is a influential as you say, anything is possible. But it’s also possible that they really are trying to get justice for your sister. The system isn’t perfect. And this isn’t the end, Sara. It was a just a grand jury hearing. They can build the case another way, and come back and try again.”

  
  
A tear escapes from the corner of her eye and he reaches over the table to wipe it away.

  
  
“I don’t mind keeping you company and being your sounding board, but you should talk about these things in group. That’s why we’re there for.”

  
  
“I’m not good with the feelings and the sharing.”

 

“Well, you seem to share just fine with me.”

 

Sara fights a smile, knowing she’s caught.

 

“It’s different with you. You don’t have any expectations. Kendra looks at me like she knows more about me than she has a right to.”

  
  
“Now, don’t be foolish.”   
  


“I’m not. I told you my mom went to her. She must’ve told her things about us, about our family. I just feel like Kendra’s asking me questions she already knows the answer to. Like she’s trying to get me to admit to something.”

 

“Is there something to admit to?”

 

“I’m afraid,” Sara says, after a few seconds of silence.

 

It’s not exactly the answer to his actual question but it’s an admission nonetheless.

 

“What could you possibly be afraid of?”

 

“What people will think,” she admits. 

 

“You don’t strike me as the type of person who dwells too much on what other people think.”

 

She takes a deep breath, as if gathering courage.

 

“I’m afraid that if I say what I feel, people will be afraid of me.”

 

Rip wants to reassure her, but he can’t in good conscience do so. He has no control over what the others would feel, especially as he doesn’t know what she hides. He’s seen glimpses of her darkness and borne witness to her power, though. It only intrigues him.

 

“If it’s worth anything, I’m not afraid of you.”

 

Her blue eyes look deep grey in the dim crimson light of the restaurant. They look upon him with startling gratitude. 

 

“I know. You have no idea what that means to me.”

 

Except, Rip thinks he’s beginning to.

 

* * *

 

 

Sara tries to stay focused on what Caitlin is saying. She sounds upset and Sara likes Caitlin, but the noise inside her head is louder. She's decided to take Rip's advice and actually give this bullshit a real try, at least for tonight. She's nervous though. She closes her hands into fists and shoves them into her pockets, just so they’ll stop shaking. When that doesn’t do much, she swings her feet back and forth, banging rhythmically against the rungs of her chair.

 

Sara raises her eyes to find Rip across from her before she remembers he's not sitting in front of her today, he's next to her. They'd come in together after having dinner, early for once in Sara's case, and Kendra had stared at them a few seconds too long. There’d been something in her smile that Sara didn't like one bit.

 

When Kendra asks if anyone else would like to share something, Sara looks at Rip next to her and he nods in encouragement. She clears her throat.

 

The surprise in Kendra's face is evident. At least to Sara it is. Sara's pleased she’s managed to surprise her at least once.

 

“We just got some bad news about my sister's case. The prosecutor took it to a grand jury to seek indictment, and the grand jury didn’t find probable cause. So, we’re back at square one.”

 

The words stick in her throat. They don't get any easier to say, no matter how many times Sara practices them.

 

“I’m so sorry, Sara,” Iris says. Others join in echoing their regret.

 

“How have you been coping with that?” Kendra says. 

 

Kendra remains impassive. Sara doesn’t understand how she can do that, how she can take everyone’s pain and not have it destroy her. She wonders if Kendra will still be unaffected once Sara’s through speaking. If any of the eight faces currently staring at her eagerly and eyes full of compassion will then look at her in derision. Her right leg jerks against Rip's left one, bouncing nervously. She feels Rip's hand make contact with her thigh, and she allows the warmth of his hand anchor her.

 

“I think about killing him, the man who killed my sister. It consumes me. Some days it feels it’s the only thing I think about. I could be walking or working or trying to sleep and then bam, like a freight train.”

 

Sara forces herself to keep her eyes on Kendra’s.

 

“It’s not uncommon to experience intrusive thoughts after trauma of any sort,” Dr. Saunders says.

 

Sara shakes her head.

 

“This is different,” Sara insists, her nostrils flaring in frustration. What is it going to take for her to understand? Sara prods at the beast inside, feels it awaken.

 

And then the story spills out of Sara, unstoppable.

 

“In the Army they teach us about dissociation and compartmentalizing. Those people we fire at, we call them insurgents, targets, the enemy, as if that makes them less somehow. My first tour, in Iraq, my platoon was shadowing a supply convoy outside of Baghdad when one of our Humvees hit an IED, and after, in the chaos, about 50 insurgents ambushed us. They threw everything they had at us, hand grenades, RPGs, AK-47 fire. And it’s weird right, because as a female soldier, you're not infantry, you’re not supposed to be in combat. We’re the ones forming connections with the locals, learning their names, assessing their needs. But when we were ambushed that day, I didn’t think. I picked up my weapon and fired. It’s like I became someone else. I killed three insurgents that day. I don’t know who they were, or what their names were, or even what they looked like, really. You’d think that would fuck somebody up, but what haunted me after, what I-- what I still see sometimes, isn't that, it's the Humvee exploding, my friends torn to pieces, my hands,” she falters as her voice shakes, “my hands bloody and shaking, trying to keep Corporal James’ guts inside his body. So, I know that when I think about killing Damien Darhk, it’s not an intrusive thought, it’s a fantasy. It’s a mission. I know exactly how I would do it, down to the second and the only reason I’m telling all of you is to stop myself from going through with it.”

 

Sara’s last words creep and settle into the room, ominous, like a sudden shadow over the shoulders. She feels hollowed out. The silence around the circle feels specially charged. Sara knows that energy. It’s fear. Despite the reassurances that group was a safe space, and that all feelings were valid, there exists an invisible line of what is acceptable, and she’s just crossed it.

 

Even Kendra looks like she isn’t sure how to proceed for once. Mission accomplished, Sara. She considers leaving then, just getting up and walking away from this pointless kumbaya bullshit. She wants to so badly, but then, next to her, Rip clears his throat and speaks.

 

“I think I understand that impulse. It sounds extreme if you haven’t been through that. And I know all of us have felt anger in our mourning. But when someone you love has died because someone decided to play god with their life, it’s different. Everything in you burns with the need for retribution.”

 

Sara’s eyes soften in gratitude and she mouths a silent  _ thank you _ . She feels like she could cry. The tension in the room loosens and it’s like everyone around the circle breathes a sigh of relief.

 

Kendra gets up from her chair, adjusting her mustard yellow sweater. She laps around the chairs a few times, her platform Mary Janes echoing in the gym.

 

“Last week when we discussed turning our negative feelings into positive action. So, Sara, what do you do right now when you feel that urge overtake you?”

 

Sara feels herself flounder under the scrutiny. She hadn’t considered there’d be more to say after her confession. What does she do? She drinks and sometimes she has sex with women she will never see again.

 

“She punches things,” Rip says.

 

“What was that?” Kendra asks.

 

“He said I punch things. He’s not wrong. I work out.”

 

Kendra stops when she comes back to her chair. She stands behind it and leans over the back of the chair. 

 

“What about people? You came in with a black eye last week.”

 

“I only punch people who deserve to be punched.”

 

She hears herself take on a defensive tone. It just makes her angrier.

 

“I bet it feels good when you do it, too,” Kendra says. “But that’s not a solution to your problem. And neither is killing the man who murdered your sister. Your anger is justified, Sara, but it’s never going to douse itself out. You need to transform it, otherwise, it’s going to consume you.”

 

Sara doesn’t waver under Kendra’s pointed assessment, but she senses something different in Kendra’s demeanor, a certain fatigue around the lines of her face that tells Sara Kendra isn’t just repeating speeches out of a handbook.

 

“Why don’t we take a quick five minute break and then come back and finish?” Kendra says, addressing the group at large.

 

They’ve never done that before. 

 

Sara springs from her chair and rushes outside. The metal door slams close behind her, the loud noise oddly satisfying. Sara presses her back against the wall, wishing its coolness would seep into her and temper the fire in her blood. Traitorous tears begin to gather at the corners of her eyes.

 

The doors opens again and Rip comes out of the gym. He leans against the wall next to her, but doesn't crowd her, nor does he say anything. She should've known he'd come after her. She'd have done the same for him.

 

“Thank you,” she says.

 

“For what?”

 

“For not making me feel like what I am.”

 

“And what’s that?”

 

“A monster.”

 

Rip sighs and angles his body toward hers. He waits for her to turn to look at him before speaking.

 

“Sara, none of what you said in there makes you a monster. And if it did, then I guess I am one, too.”

 

“You’re a good man,” she counters. Rip Hunter and ‘monster’ just don’t go together.

 

“A good man who’s thought his fair share about killing the man who killed his family. I quite fancy something up close and personal, so he knows it’s happening.”

 

Sara looks at him with new eyes, how the glow from the street light plays around the hollows of his face. Who is this man? She'd guessed at a dark side lurking beneath the sad handsome face. But this feels like the first time he's allowing her to see it. She's humbled by it.

 

“How would you do it?” Rip whispers, almost like he’s afraid of the words. Sara steps right into his personal space, bodies almost touching. She stares right at him forcing his sad brooding eyes to meet her intensity. He doesn’t see her take out the blade, but she knows he feels its sharp point at the base of his sternum, heavy, like a promise, stealing the breath from him.

 

“Like that,” she says.

 

They are so close they’re almost sharing breath now. Goosebumps prickle all the way up her arms, across her neck and down her spine.

 

The whine of the door opening again forces them apart and Iris peeks her head out of her gap.

 

“Hey, sorry for interrupting. Are you guys coming back in? We’re about to start.”

 

Sara tucks her blade safely back into her pocket and they follow Iris back inside and take their seats again.

 

Kendra’s written NEW MEANING on her easel pad. She’s put her hair up, too, with the white curl falling over her face. Like’s she’s also trying to make herself seem new. She waits until everyone is back in their seat before starting.

 

“Let’s change gears a bit, ok? As a fun, positive exercise, I want you to think about things you’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t for whatever reason. It could be anything,” Kendra says.

 

For her part, Sara’s decided she’s filled up her sharing quota for the night, so she doesn’t bother to think of anything, and she’s just going to sit back and listen.

 

Lisa blushes her way through revealing she and her husband John are big Lord of the Rings fans who have always wanted to make the pilgrimage to New Zealand, see The Shire. Lisa reminds Sara a little of Moira Queen, in her elegance and the way she holds herself so primly. But there’s a sweetness to her that Moira could never come close to.

 

Rip admits he’s always wanted to ride a motorcycle, which makes Wally laugh, though not mockingly. There’s something about Wally that tells Sara he and Jax would be good friends.

 

“Seriously? I never pegged you for an adrenaline junkie, Mr. British accent.” Wally says.

 

Sara can see Rip on a bike, though. He'd ride something classic and vintage, and British, naturally. A 1970’s Triumph Bonneville. That’d be his bike.

 

“There’s a quite a lot about me that you don’t know, Mr. West,” Rip says. “I’ll have you know I wasn’t always a stuffy university professor.”

 

Sara’s beginning to see that herself. A thought occurs to her then, something to repay him for all he’s been doing for her. She spends the rest of the session lost in thought and making plans until Kendra adjourns the meeting.

 

Unlike the previous nights, nobody scrambles to leave as quickly as possible, and instead they mingle around and talk to each other. Sara and Rip both stand around like shy teenagers at a school dance.

 

“If you hurry, you might catch a donut before John eats them all,” Rip says.

 

Sara chuckles softly.

 

“He can have ‘em. I’m not really hungry today.”

 

Her stomach feels sour, uninviting. She’s sure she’d puke anything she ate. She really should be going, she has a shift at the bar starting soon. And yet she can’t tear herself away. She feels as though the night should be punctuated with something special, significant, after the day they’ve had together. But as usual, words elude her. 

 

Rip averts his eyes, fidgets with his coat as Iris walks toward them with intent written on her face. She really does remind Sara of Laurel so much. 

 

“Hey,” Iris says, “some of us are heading over to Jitters for some hot chocolate. Would you guys like to come?”

 

Rip looks at Sara, raises an eyebrow in question. 

 

“Thanks, but I have to go. I have a shift starting in half an hour.”

 

“That’s too bad,” Iris says. “Maybe next time.”

 

Sara turns to Rip and says, “you should go, though.”

 

She sees the indecision play across his face before his impeccable British manners kick in and he nods his assent. 

 

“Great! I’ll go tell the others,” Iris says and then goes away, leaving Sara alone with Rip once more.

 

“Hey, thanks for hanging out with me today,” Sara says. 

 

“It was no trouble. Gave me an excuse to leave the house even.”

 

Sara gives into her impulses then and wraps her arms around Rip in a tentative hug. He stiffens for a beat, but then Sara feels his arms close loosely around her. His hold is awkward, as if his body has forgotten how to hug. He readjusts a second later, and he pulls her closer. His coat smells like old leather of the best quality, and she turns her head, tucking into the curve of his shoulder. And in that moment she forgets they’re still inside the gym, bathed in bright light, surrounded by people, because in that moment she feels safe.

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

Rip blows across the top of his CC Jitters ceramic mug as he and Iris walk back toward their table, carrying everyone’s drinks. John and Lisa had begged off so in the end Rip joined Iris, Wally, Cisco and Caitlin for late night hot chocolate. Or a an Earl Grey latte in his case.

 

As they sit, he notices he’s the oldest person in the group, and it makes him feel a bit like he’s out trying to socialize with his students. That had always made him vaguely uncomfortable. He never really managed to connect with them at the personal level.

 

These four also seem to have already formed connections. They converse easily, like old friends. Rip stays at the periphery, drinking his tea. He hasn’t had a London Fog in years. This one isn’t half bad. He cradles the mug in his hands, trying to warm them. They’re always so cold.

 

“You said you were a professor? What’d you teach?” Cisco asks, addressing him.

 

“Me? Oh, I’m in mechanical engineering and applied physics. I’ve dabbled into theoretical physics as well, though that’s more of hobby really.”

 

“No shit. That’s my field,” Cisco says.

 

“Me too, man,” Wally says. “Well, the engineering part. And not yet, exactly. I’m working on transferring my credits to CCU.”

 

“It’s a good school for that,” Rip says.

 

“What’s your  _ thing _ ?” Cisco says, leaning back into his chair, and crossing his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says Entropy Happens. 

 

“Sorry, my  _ thing _ ?”

 

“Yeah, you know, like, your pet project,” he clarifies.

 

“Well, I quite like gadgets. But tachyons fascinate me.”

 

“Wild. My boss is obsessed with that too. I work for Harrison Wells at Star Labs. And I think Mercury Labs is studying tachyons, too? I’m not sure.”

 

“They are,” Rip says. “Tina McGee has been trying to get me to go work for her.”

 

“Why don’t you?” Caitlin asks.

 

“That’s a good question,” Rip says, and then gulps what’s left of his tea, even if it’s still too hot to drink it like that.

 

“So, what’s the deal with you and that Sara chick?” Wally says, and the look on his face says he’s wanted to ask the question for a while.

 

“Wally!” Iris stage-whispers.

 

“I don’t follow,” Rip says.

 

“Come on, man, everyone’s noticed that mutual staring thing you guys got going on.”

 

It’s then it dawns of Rip what Wally is insinuating. And he’s indignant not because it’s absurd, but because he’s caught himself staring at Sara with eyes that lingered too long. She’s beautiful, there’s no question about that. But--

 

“You think we-- My wife was murdered. And so was her sister.  _ That’s  _ what we have in common.”

 

“Sorry man, I didn’t mean to offend.”

 

“Wally, go help Stacy out and take all these mugs back to the counter,” Iris says.

 

Wally makes an affronted gesture but surrenders under Iris’ resolve. He collects all the mugs with a roll of his eyes.

 

“I’m so sorry for what Wally said. It was uncalled for,” Iris says.

 

“No harm done,” Rip says.

 

But it’s clear now the outing is coming to a close. As usual he has sucked the fun out of the room with his inability to take a joke. They all gather their coats and bags and file out of Jitters. He raises a hand goodbye and thanks them for the night out, and then walks to the nearest bus stop, hands tucked safely into the pockets of his coat.

 

He’s scared for what the rest of the night holds for him. Sleeping through the night on that bed, with no one next to him is daunting.

 

His phone buzzes inside his pocket and he takes it out. It’s a text message, from Sara. She’s sent a photo of a graffitied building wall with the words ‘time doesn’t exist, clocks exist’.

 

> **_From Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ i saw this today. it made me think of you. _

 

Rip stares at the photo and the corner of his mouth quirks up slightly. It’s been so long since anyone thought of him just because. What does he say? Does he just say thanks? Does he send one of the little faces? Should he send back a photo of something that reminds him of her? He’s never quite gotten the hang of this casual texting thing.

 

> **_To Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ Aren’t you supposed to be working? _

 

He can picture her, sneakily texting behind the bar. She’s probably rolling her eyes at her phone right now.

 

> **_From Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ try to sleep tonight, Rip _
> 
>  
> 
> **_To Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ How do you know I don’t sleep? _
> 
>  
> 
> **_From Sara Lance:_ **
> 
> _ cause I saw your stuff on the couch _
> 
> _ and i don’t sleep at night either _

 

As he waits for the bus he thinks, what does Sara mean to him? Sara’s his friend. One who can fill the gaps between him and Gideon, because she understands. Because he doesn’t have to tell her things for her to know that he’s feeling them.

 

He feels a flutter in his stomach, a warmth he thought he’d never feel again--- a firefly flickering alight upon the coming of darkness.

  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My LSAT is this weekend, so don't expect an update before then, I'll be pretty busy studying this week. Hopefully, everything will settle down from next week on. Anyway, I'll leave you with a tease for the next chapter: the two songs inspiring the chapter are 'Sober' by Lorde and Lykke Li's cover of 'Hold On, We're Going Home'. Make of that what you will.


	5. What Will We Do When We're Sober?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, let's do this again! Chapter five has been updated and reuploaded as of 12/15/2017. It has a little over 5000 extra words, so even if you've read it before, please read it again. If you've been following me on tumblr you know what's been going on. I have been having a really hard time writing this, for many reasons. Some of them are practical (Puerto Rico is still recuperating, I still don't have electricity at home, etc). Some of them are creative. I wrote myself into a major corner with the old version of chapter 5 and the only way to write myself out and be able to actually continue on to chapter 6, was going go back to this one and add extra scenes. Thank you so much for sticking with me. I hope you like the additions I made. There is a whole new part, and the therapy scene was extended.

They’d warned him he’d have to mourn them separately. That although the event that took their lives had been singular, Jonas and Miranda’s deaths were each their own tragedy, with unique consequences in his life.

The first therapist Rip had seen, just months after losing his family, had explained it with detached exactitude. He’d said the grieving process wouldn’t be parallel, that getting over one death might take less time than the other. He’d gone further than that, even, saying that it’d be paramount, otherwise his recovery would stagnate. It’d left a sour taste in Rip’s mouth. He'd considered the psychiatrist’s words tactless. They'd _both_ been his family. How dare this doctor imply that one of them meant more than the other? It’d been the last session Rip had attended.

They’d warned him and he hadn’t believed it. Except now... now, he understands. He _had_ stagnated, for almost two years, and it'd nearly claimed his life. Hearing her say it had been devastating, but Gideon had been right in telling him he hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. It feels scary and yet necessary that he admit that now: he'd been suicidal. But that person feels like an entirely different man. The messy work of dismantling his grief has paid off, and he's come to fully understand, beyond the intellectual level, that letting himself die doesn’t honor his family in any way.

But life beyond quotidian existence is a choice he still doesn’t know how to make.

In the immediate aftermath of their murder, he'd felt as though he might soon follow them. Each morning he woke up had been both a surprise and a burden. Yet today marks a week since he returned to his bedroom, to wake up in his marital bed, the space next to him empty, and the sunrise hasn’t felt like a punishment.

He doesn’t quite know what to make of that yet.

He still misses Miranda, yes, but he’s beginning to realize he misses her in the way one misses the past— fondly, but with the understanding that it exists behind a veil that cannot be penetrated. She is a vignette now. Something he can close his eyes and access inside his mind palace, like the few flashes of memories he has of his father and the time before the foster care system swallowed him up.

But the nostalgia has paved the way for another emotion to grow heavy and lingering within him: guilt.

When he lost Miranda, he’d lost his soulmate, his best friend, his companion. The one person who’d seen the best and worst of him and loved him for all of it. He’d vowed to love and protect until death do them part and when he'd said them the words had carried the weight of eternity, the way he thinks vows should.

But he's existed without her for almost 630 days and he knows with full certainty that he _can_ go on without her. He can build a box to keep his love and his hurt for her safe inside his heart without it consuming him.

He doesn’t, however, know how to go on without his son.

Losing Miranda had made him a widower. There is no word for what he is after losing Jonas.

The lack of definition distresses him more than most other things. He is by nature utilitarian, always seeking to assign purpose to everything. As a scientist, it’s his job to ask questions and seek answers. In the museum, it’s his job to restore things to the way they were. But this isn’t something he can hypothesize, experiment and answer. His son isn’t a broken clock he can grease the wheels of and bring back to life.

His little boy is dead and there is nothing he can do to change that.

Before Jonas, he’d been indifferent toward children. He didn’t dislike them at all, only that children were the milestones of other people. People who’d grown up having normal lives. Growing up, Rip's only goal had been survival. But holding his son for the first time had been the purest moment of his life. A blessing he'd never considered himself worthy of, but that is not to say he hadn't wanted it.

He'd had the dream again last night, the one where they are sick and he takes care of them. But only now that he’s awake he can parse out the details. It’d been a different dream, actually, one where Miranda wasn’t there and his dream self hadn’t thought it strange. Jonas burned with an ever rising fever and nothing he tried seemed to help.

He misses Jonas in a way that feels new and oppressive, even physical. As if his relocation of the pain he feels over Miranda has opened up space in the forefront of his soul for the memory of his dead son to take root. Rip misses the infectious pitch of Jonas' laughter, and the smell of his shampoo. He misses the way Jonas would narrow his eyes and poke his tongue out when he was concentrating on something that took his interest. He misses his inquisitive nature, and playing football in the park on Saturday mornings.

As Rip wanders from room to room, a sense of dread walks with him. The house feels especially hostile this morning and Rip can’t bear to be in it with no companions but his memories. He grabs his coat and heads out on foot, with no destination set.

He passes by the elementary school where Jonas used to course. It’s recess time and the children are out in the yard. Each peal of laughter is like a stab in his side. Rip quickens his pace, putting as much distance as he can between himself and that painful sound.

Rip lets his body wander aimlessly around the neighborhood until he finds himself in front of one of his favorite places in Central City, a shop called The Oculus. Rip had discovered the antiques shop by chance one morning whilst going on a walk, nearly a decade ago now. He and Miranda had just moved to Central City and they'd been living in accommodations provided by the university—a small yet charming flat in a building on campus reserved for visiting faculty. It really had been tiny, with only small kitchenette, an alcove for the bed and a table that had served as both dining place and office. But they hadn't cared, so young and in love as they'd been then. Two orphans who'd grown up with nothing but their intellect to call their own. And the flat, well they didn’t own it, but it was theirs nonetheless.

Central City had felt so different to what they’d know before, with bright sunny skies and neighbors with friendly dispositions. It’d been impossible not to fall in love with the city and become infused with its optimism. In the mornings, before his first class of the day, Rip used to go on extensive walks around the neighborhood, always eager to come home and share with Miranda the places he'd discovered.

One such place had been The Oculus. It’d been the name which caught Rip’s attention first. He'd known the term from the architecture elective course where he'd met Miranda. But in the end, it'd been its inventory that which kept him coming back. Rip had acquired a love for antiques in his teenage years in East London, when he'd apprenticed for a clockmaker. It’d been fortunate for him that Miranda, a history buff herself, liked them as much as he did.

The great neon blue orb that hangs over the shop’s storefront is as strange and mesmerizing as he remembers it, like a great all seeing eye, and Rip pushes the big glass door open to cross the threshold. The bell above the door jingles and the shop owner, a man named Zaman Druce, turns around.

“Dr. Hunter,” he says in evident surprise.

“Mr. Druce.”

“You were the last person I expected to see walk through my door today.”

“It has been a while, hasn’t it?” Rip answers, rueful.

“It’s certainly good to see you, in any case.”

Rip can't deny that he wishes his visit had been planned instead of happenstance. He'd have cleaned up a little. He's all to aware that he's let himself go, as people say. Rip has always esteemed Mr. Druce and it's easy to feel embarrassed in his presence, particularly when the man is wearing a tailored suit, and Rip is wearing old jeans and a t-shirt two sizes too large.

“Were you looking for something in particular?” Mr. Druce asks.

Rip appreciates Druce's quick switch to the professional. Rip finds small talk painful even under favorable circumstances.

Really, now that he's here, he wants to look for something Jonas would've liked, except he doesn’t want to say it out loud. He couldn't stomach the feigned sympathy today of all days.

“Just browsing today,” he answers instead.

Mr. Druce leaves him to his browsing and Rip wanders off to reacquaint himself with the familiar smells and textures of the old shop. Like most antiques shops, The Oculus is something like organized chaos, periods and purposes all coexisting at once in a seemingly nonsensical maze. The overabundance of stuff makes it hard for the eye to ever focus on anything in particular.

As Rip moves between the peeling shelves, he identifies a few things he might like to take home, like the Nikon F3 camera that, upon a cursory glance, seems to be in working order. Still, nothing jumps out at him as something Jonas would have enjoyed with him. Jonas hadn’t shared his love for old things, or things with history as Miranda used to say. He'd been too much a child of the twenty-first century in that regard, but he did like to build things. And he'd liked bridges and towers.

Rip continues on, passing by the jewelry vitrine. Jewelry isn’t something he’s especially  interested in himself, not even as a collector, but every once in a while he’d pick up something for Miranda. He notices a chunky beaded bracelet in earthy colors that he knows Miranda would have loved. A few months ago, he would’ve bought it and kept it. Today, it coaxes a wistful smile from him.

A couple of spaces away, though, he spots something that catches his eye: a pendant of a tiny bird on a thin brass chain. He stops his perusing to look at it through the glass.

“Anything catch your fancy?” Mr Druce says from behind the counter.

“May I see that necklace?” Rip asks, pointing to it.

Mr. Druce opens the display case and picks up the velvet necklace stand. He places it gingerly on the glass top. Rip lifts up the chain by two careful fingers, it’s so light. The pendant itself is miniscule, barely the size his thumbnail, but the detail on it is remarkably intricate. There are dozens of tiny feathers of various sizes etched on the metal. It’s in fantastic condition, no patina visible, and the metal shines when held to the light.

“What’s this for?” Rip says, pointing to a tiny hole on the body of the bird, above the tail feathers.

“It’s a whistle,” Mr. Druce offers, bringing his thumb and forefinger together to his lips.

“Oh, of course. A songbird. Would you set that aside for me whilst I keep on browsing?”

“Certainly, doctor. It’s not your usual fare, I must say.”

Rip puffs out a self deprecating breath. The necklace really isn’t something he would've had looked at twice before and he's trying to refrain from examining the impulse too closely.

What's he going to do with the necklace anyway?

“I have been broadening my horizons. Exploring my options, as they say,” he explains.

Druce nods once in acknowledgment. He retrieves a velvet presentation box from behind the counter and packs up the necklace.

“Well, I hope you haven’t explored too far. I might have been saving something for you.”

Rip’s curiosity is piqued. The statement itself is not odd. Over the years Mr. Druce has set aside a number of items he thought would interest Rip. They always do. The man has impeccable taste.

Rip follows Mr. Druce to the back of the shop where Druce produces one of the most striking clocks Rip has ever seen. It's a miniature skeleton clock, made of golden metal. He bends down slightly to take a closer look. It's deceptively simple in its design—a black oval base, a y-shaped frame with a pull alarm, white enamel chapter ring with roman numerals and hands of blue steel—but upon closer inspection Rip notices the metal is inlaid with a pattern of roses in a vine. It has a quirky, architectural quality to it that Rip thinks Jonas would’ve liked. It looks like the Eiffel Tower.

“Mid 19th Century?” Rip asks.

“Made in 1851,” Mr. Druce confirms, “French.”

“Does it work?”

Druce shakes his head. “It’s in need of extensive repair.”

“How much?” Rip asks, already knowing he’ll pay any price.

Mr. Druce considers for a second.

“Why don’t we make a deal? Why don’t you take it? If you can fix it, you can keep it. If you can't, you come back and we'll negotiate a price.”

Rip’s head comes up in surprise. He begins to protest, there is no way he possibly accept that, the timepiece must be worth at least $800.00 but Mr. Druce insists he take it.

“I can’t think of anyone more worthy of having it,” he says and Rip knows he’ll try his hardest to get the clock working. Not because he doesn’t want to pay for it, but because he can’t bear to let yet another person down.

* * *

 

“Do you think I should take a cooking class?” Rip asks Sara as she sidles up to him by the  refreshments table, where Dr. Saunders had laid out stacks of flyers advertising all kinds of courses, from the crafty, like knitting, to the practical, like basic accounting. Sara takes the leaflet from him and scans it before giving it back to him. She’s late, as usual, and thus missed the whole explanation for the flyers, something about exploring new territory and dealing with the practical aftermaths of loss. In Sara's defense, though, they haven't started the actual meeting yet.

“I take it Miranda was the chef in the house?” she asks as she looks over a flyer for a life drawing class.

“No, she was pants at it, too,” Rip admits. “Poor Jonas grew up on bland chicken and takeaway curry.” He tries to laugh it off, but what comes out sounds more like a desperate half sob.

“My dad, he loves to cook. My mom was always too busy, doing too many things. And I think she sometimes resented having to be the “woman” of the house. So, when my dad wasn’t on duty, he’d cook dinner. Otherwise, it was takeaway for us, too.”

He turns toward her, but his retort dies on the tip of his tongue at the sight of her. It takes him a moment to figure it out, but she has makeup on. Not a lot, he can still see her freckles, but her pale lashes are darkened with mascara, and her lips are glossy, further emphasizing the natural pout of her mouth. Her hair is done up in a braid that circles her head like a crown and she’s wearing a wide-collared dress that leaves her shoulders exposed, and knee-high suede boots.

“You look nice today,” he says but the words come out like a backhanded compliment and he feels like a prat bumbling at the sight of a beautiful woman. And sure enough, Sara’s thick eyebrows furrow together and she crosses her arms over her chest. Fantastic. He’s gone and offended her now.

“Today, as opposed to every other day?” she says.

“No-- No. I mean--” he spits out as shame makes his face heat.

“You sound so surprised.”

“I wasn’t--”

“Then again you did tell me I looked like shit that one time.”

“I think you always look nice,” he blurts out in a last desperate attempt to salvage the situation. “I just--”

Sara purses her lips for a moment but then cracks a laugh.

“Rip, breathe. I was just messing with you. But thank you for noticing.”

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“Supremely.”

“Have any special plans after this?”

“No. It’s just-- You know when you feel like crap so you make yourself look pretty hoping the rest of you will catch up?” She frowns as she makes a show of looking him over. “Or maybe you don’t.”

“Hey, now, don’t be mean.”

Dr. Saunders calls the meeting into session and they rush to their seats. The only empty spots left are right next to each other. As they settle in, Wally throws Rip a knowing look and Rip suddenly remembers what Wally had brought up last week when they were at Jitters. Rip doesn't think he's blushed this much since puberty.

“Rip, during one of our first sessions, you said you felt that death had stripped you of your titles. Do you still feel that way?”

Dr. Saunders' abrupt address startles him. It's not her way to be this direct this early on in a meeting and he’s still out of sorts from what just happened with Sara. It takes him a moment to gather his wits and figure out how to answer.

How _does_ he feel?

He feels better, no doubt, and he thinks he’s come a long way. He can examine and give name to his feelings now, pick them apart to process them, but that’s not what Dr. Saunders is asking.

“Yes,” he admits finally and it costs him to say it out loud. For all his emotional progress, he’s still in the same place in many other ways. “This week in particular, I’ve really missed being a father. I’m not sure I know how to articulate this right. It’s not just my son I miss, him as a person, but the concept of being a father. It used to take up so much of my life. Every decision I made had be to filtered through that lens. Where we moved, what film to see at the theater. I had a son and now I don’t. What does that mean? Do I stop being a father? How do I occupy that space? Does that make sense?”

“It does,” Dr. Saunders answers.

“For what it’s worth,” John says, gruff voiced and quiet, as if the words cost him much energy, “I still feel like a grandfather even if Eva is gone.”

Rip wonders about his own father and whether he still feels like a dad, wherever he is. Rip has to believe he does. For his own sake, because he doesn't want to think about a day when he no longer feels like Jonas' father.

“Rip, I asked you specifically because you had brought it up explicitly in a previous session, but what you describe is something everyone in this room is probably struggling with, especially at this point in the recovery process."

Dr. Saunders stands from her chair and begins her usual walk around the circle, her boots punctuating every word.

“We all strive for definition, ways to anchor ourselves to life,” she continues. “Sometimes we equate what we do with who we are. We say I'm a teacher, or a therapist, but there's so much more to us than that. And the same thing applies to what you're all going through. Your relationship with the deceased was only part of your identity as an individual, even if at times it felt that it was all you were. And so the tough part now is having to emotionally relocate the deceased to make room for new identities to come forth. This is the part of grief we don’t consider when we think about bereavement. The process doesn’t stop with acceptance. In many ways, acceptance is only a beginning. A beginning of the after.”

She pauses in her walking to address Rip again. She looks at him in that calm, maternal way she has. There are lifetimes in her eyes. He remembers feeling like she was so young when he first saw her, dared to question what she could possibly teach him.

“I'm going to reiterate my advice from earlier,” she says, “Don’t try to be what you were. Consider this a time of experimentation. Now you get to try all sorts of different things. Some of them will be for you, others won't. And that's okay.”

Dr. Saunders then pairs them up into 4 groups and tells them to discuss how their identities and roles have evolved and perhaps share coping strategies and that is how Rip ends up sitting across from a quiet Caitlin.

He remembers thinking she reminded him of Miranda. And their eyes do carry the same softness and compassion, but Caitlin is withdrawn in ways Miranda wasn’t. He isn’t exactly the most talkative person either and they stare at each other for moments that stretch too long before they both chuckle, breaking the tension.

“What you said that day,” she starts, “about there not being a word that defined you because you lost your child? That really touched me. I lost a brother when I was a kid. I know what that does to a parent.”

Rip swallows around the sudden knot in his throat.

“But I also understand at another level. When Ronnie died, I didn't just have a funeral to plan, I had a wedding to cancel. We had a caterer and a venue. I had a dress. But I never married him, so I wasn't his widow. There was no real word for what his death made me, either.”

This is why Dr. Saunders paired them.

When they’d started all this, all those weeks ago, Rip had immediately felt drawn to Sara’s anger because it came from a place he understood elementally. Laurel, like Jonas and Miranda, had been murdered and no other person in the group could relate to him that way. But Caitlin, like Rip, had lost her partner.

“It's crazy how how alienating that is, isn't it?” he says. “It's just a word. Why should it hold so much power?”

“You've said it. We all want to feel like we're not alone in our experiences, especially the painful ones. And in my case, it brought other practical complications.”

Since she wasn’t Ronnie’s widow, and he’d left no living will, Caitlin wasn’t entitled to his pension or any other financial retributions. The money had gone to his parents.

“And it’s not about the money, I don’t care about that,” she continues, “but it was just one more thing that made me feel like less.”

But she tearfully shares she’s not sure how much longer she can afford to keep their house on her salary alone.

“It was our home. I’ve given up a lot of things, but I don’t know how I’m going to give this one up.”

He recognizes that his struggles are different in scope, less practical and more psychological, but he pays her candor in kind and admits that he’d lost his position at the university due to his depression, which turned out to have an adverse effect. With no work to focus on, he sank deeper into his grief.

“Forced mental health leave, but at least they didn’t fire me.”

“You’re doing better now, though.”

“Yes.”

And he still doesn’t know how to come back. It’s all right there, all he has to do is reach out and take it.

Talking to Caitlin helps put things into perspective for him. It gives him an idea of how it would've been like for Miranda if he were the one who died. Would she have stayed in Central City, or would she have gone back to England where her academic peers at least knew her?

Rip looks at his hands, twists his wedding ring around his finger.

“I took mine off last week,” she says and holds her left hand up, “I still reach for it sometimes.” She tucks an errant curl behind her ear, ducking her head slightly. “I went on a date,” she tells him.

“Oh?” He sits up straight in his chair and gives Caitlin his full attention. “How did that go?”

“It was weird,” she says, with a laugh. “Like really weird and super awkward. But in a good way, you know? I thought I was done with all that new crush awkwardness. The butterflies and the blushing. The quickening of the pulse when they’re near. Turns out I wasn’t.”

“You’re young. There’s no reason you should close yourself off like that.”

“Right back at you.”

Rip looks over Cailin’s shoulder, his gaze drawn to where Sara’s sitting with Cisco, as if pulled by a magnet.

“Did you feel ready?” he asks.

Caitlin sighs. “I don’t know. But I’m not sorry I did it. For what it’s worth.”

“The hardest part is acknowledging the truth that the world doesn’t stop after they’ve gone,” he says. “It feels like betrayal.”

“Yes.”

The timer Dr. Saunders had set beeps, signaling the end of the exercise and she calls them back to the circle. Rip and Caitlin take their chairs in hand and head back to the middle of the room. Rip ends up between her and Lisa.

Dr.  Saunders then stands next to her easel pad, where she’s written five words: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual. These, according to her, are the five realms of nurturing the self. She then brings out the familiar glass bowl from their first meeting and then hands out square pieces of blank paper. She instructs them to write down five things-- one for each of the realms-- that one can do to achieve self-care. She reminds them to be practical about it, these have to be attainable things.

Rip stares at his papers, his mind drawing a blank. He was never good at the self-care thing even before. He definitely isn't good at it now. He supposes that's the point, though. It wouldn't be effective therapy if it didn't challenge him. He thinks about what Miranda would've done, but then abandons that train of thought. This isn't about her. It's about him without her.

He considers Sara's brand of self-care, how she advocates for giving into one's dark impulses. He doesn't think that's for him either.

In the end, he writes 'finish an abandoned project' on one of his papers, thinking of the various antiques in mid-restoration currently waiting in his workshop. He fudges the rest by writing trite things like 'reread your favorite book'. Something tells him 'get drunk on your choice of spirit' is not an acceptable form of self-care.

When they're all finished writing, they dump their folded paper squares into the bowl and then pass it around. Dr. Saunders tells them to each take at least one and up to three papers from the bowl. Most of the suggestions turn out to be simple, like Iris' three choices: pick up a new skill; treat yourself to a nice dinner at a restaurant; indulge in your favorite candy. Or Sara's task of taking a friend out for drinks.

When the bowl reaches him, Rip only pulls only one paper. It's cowardly, yes, but he's a little terrified of what he might have to do.

“Do something you’ve never done before,” he reads out loud. He frowns at the slip of paper. Somehow that's left feeling more bewildered than before. He's essentially tasked with nothing. Or anything. It’s all a matter of perspective. There was a time when the unknown would have excited him, but he has misplaced his sense of adventure in order to stick to his comforting routines.

With the whole world of possibilities ahead of him, what will he do?

He looks at Sara from the corner of his eye and finds she's already looking at him. She’s not embarrassed that he caught her, as she smiles at him in that subtle yet earnest way she has, close lipped, soft eyes and round cheeks.

He gets lost in the possibilities of that smile for a minute and misses the last of the activity. He comes back to himself just in time to hear Dr. Saunders ask that they follow through with the tasks as best they can and be ready to talk about the experience next week.

“Next week is our last session,” Dr. Saunders continues. “I always try to make the last session less somber and more a celebration of your loved ones and focusing on the future, so I'll bring this up now. Six weeks isn't really a lot of time and if any of you feel you need further therapy you can come see me in my office. I am available for individual sessions.”

Dr. Saunders adds they are welcomed to bring photos or mementos to share one last time, and then she dismisses them until next week.

“Oh, and don’t forget to check out the flyers on the table there, if you haven’t already,” she adds over the din of squeaking plastic chairs and idle chatter.

Rip twists in his seat to gather his coat from where it's draped over the back of his chair and checks his phone for the time, calculating how long he will have to wait for the next bus. A shadow falls over him and he looks up, coming face to face with Sara’s hips. His gaze tracks the length of her body, up, up, until he meets her playful eyes. He’s not used to having to look at her from below.

“Hi,” she says and he blinks rapidly, trying to shake himself out of his Sara Lance induced haze. “Are you still carless? I have my mom’s car tonight. I can give you ride a home.”

“Um, yes. That would be --I’d appreciate it, thank you.”

She steps back and holds out a hand. He grabs it and allows himself to savor the feel of it in his own, rough and calloused, yet so warm. She pulls him off his chair easily.

They wave goodbye to Dr. Saunders, who’s been observing their interaction with too much interest, and continue on, stopping briefly by the refreshments table so Sara can grab one of her often craved chocolate covered donuts.

The crisp February air greets them with a breeze that coaxes goosebumps all the way up Rip’s arms. Iris waves them over to where she’s standing with the rest of their group in the middle of the carpark. She tells them the group was all thinking about getting Dr. Saunders a thank you present, nothing too big, just a gesture, would they be okay pitching in for that? They agree and then they bid their farewells as they continue on to Sara’s car. Wally winks at Rip before following his sister into their own car.

“What was that about?” Sara asks.

“No idea,” Rip says. He clears his throat, fidgets with his coat as he waits for Sara to unlock the car.

There are books and folders piled high on the passenger seat. “My mom’s stuff,” Sara says, reaching over the console to grab the lot and throw it in the backseat, making a bigger mess in the process.

Rip settles into the car and inquires about Sara’s mother. He recalls Sara having mentioned something about picking her up from campus once. He wonders if he knows her at all, and that second of uncertainty before Sara answers has him teetering on the edge of unease. He keeps life  divided into the life Before, and the After. Sara firmly belongs to the after and any connection to the before would feel too weird. But it turns out he doesn’t know a Dinah Lance from Greek Studies. It’s a relief.  

As Sara pulls out of the car park and into traffic, silence befalls them. Rip shifts in his seat, making the leather squeak. Sara reaches over to turn on the radio. The station is counting down the greatest love songs ever written, in honor of Valentine’s Day, which is coming up in less than a week.

“Ugh, gross,” Sara says and flicks the radio off again.

It’s far from the first time they’ve been alone together and silence with Sara has never felt awkward. But it does now.

They stop for a red light and Sara maneuvers out of her fur coat, complaining about how her mother always keeps the heat on too high. Rip’s eyes are immediately drawn to the newly exposed skin of her freckled chest and the sharp ridges of her collarbones where her sister’s necklace rests.

Which reminds him, there is a velvet box with a songbird necklace currently sitting on top of the desk in his study. It’s no use trying to fool himself any longer. He’d bought it for her. He’d been drawn to that necklace because it’d reminded him of her, the same way she sends him photos of things that make her think of him. She shares them so easily but the thought of giving her the necklace feels impossible. Would she smile the way he does when he gets those texts?

“So, what do you think about this assignment thing?” she says, her eyes on the road as she turns a corner. “It sounds like bullshit, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think there’s merit to it.” And he does think that. Theoretically.

She turns on her seat to look at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Really? And how exactly is going out and getting drunk with a friend going to help me overcome grief. Because I’ve been doing that, for months.”

“You’re missing the point. It’s not about the actual drinking, which is not a healthy coping strategy, by the way. It’s about reaching out, making emotional connections.” He sighs. “Grief is like being alone in a soundproof room. That’s what it does, it wastes your relationships away. Once it takes hold of you it’s like the world gets quieter and quieter until you can’t hear anything at all. And taking that first step out back into the world is the hardest thing.”

“Wow. When did you get so wise and eloquent?”

She plays it off as a joke, but he can tell his words reached her.

“I have my moments. Plus, unlike _someone_ , I’ve been paying attention in class.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a regular teacher’s pet. So what are you going to do for your homework? Jump off a plane? Drive a race car?”

“I was thinking I’d try baking a cake,” he answers, and he’s only half-joking.

She stares at him, incredulous, head swiveling between him and the road. “You’ve never baked a cake? Not even grade school bake sale brownies with your mom?”

“I didn’t have a mum,” he shrugs. “Though Miranda did manage those with Jonas.”

“Oh. I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t know, about your mom.”

“It’s alright. I never knew her. Can’t miss someone you never knew, right?” His lip curls in a self-deprecating smile.

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“No, I suppose it’s not.”

At last Sara turns the corner that leads into Rip’s neighborhood. She slows down as they reach his street. She parks in front of his house and idles the car.

“Hey, the car is gone,” she says, pointing to the empty space on his driveway where the mangled hunk of metal used to be.

“I had it towed. Didn’t need the reminder.”

“Now that’s a healthy coping strategy.”

“Do you want to come in?” The words had come unbidden but he’s not sorry he said them. The only thing waiting for him inside is loneliness and tonight he doesn’t want to be alone.

“Okay.”

As they cross the threshold into his home, Rip is thankful he’d tidied up that morning, recalling the last time Sara was here and how embarrassed he’d been at the abandoned state of his house. It’s miles better now. The smell of dust has been replaced with the sweet scent of jasmine incense and there are no bed pillows on the furniture. It feels like a home again and not a madman’s lodging.

He hangs his duster between Miranda’s grey trench coat and Jonas’ orange windbreaker and leads Sara to the back of his house, toward his study.

“Wow,” Sara exclaims after he turns on the lights in the room. “I didn’t really get a good look at this place last time I was here. It’s beautiful.”

The study is Rip’s favorite room in the house. In fact, the space had been the reason why Rip wanted this particular house. He’d fallen in love at first sight.

The room is large and wide, as it takes up the entire expanse of the house. It has an industrial feel to it, with walls of exposed brick and built in shelves of mahogany, and wooden beams on the ceiling. And of course, the most striking of all,  is the large skylight in the middle of the room. Over the years, Rip has filled his study with his antiques. And sufficed to say, he’s quite proud of his collection.

He leaves Sara to her gawking and heads over to the bar to grab a bottle of his best scotch, pouring them each a glass. He hands one of them to Sara and raises his own in a toast.

“Here’s to making emotional connections,” he says.

“And doing things we’ve never done before,” she answers.

They touch their tumblers together and take a drink.

“So, this is, like, your man cave,” Sara says, twirling around in place while looking at her surroundings.

“It’s not a man cave,” he bites out the words. He detests that term. “It’s a study.”

“Right, okay. Name one thing in here that was Miranda’s.”

“Touche,” he concedes, after a few seconds of searching and failing to find something that isn’t his. “That still doesn’t make it a man cave,” he adds and it teases a small laugh out of her.

Sara wanders around the room, drink in hand, looking at everything. It’s strange, having someone else with him here. Miranda never ventured into his study unless she needed to, understanding of the fact that people drain Rip and he needs a place to retreat to every night. Seeing Sara here, taking up space, existing in a world that was previously only his, makes him anxious in a way he can’t quite tell if it’s good or bad yet.

She spins his antique globe and watches it go for a minute before she halts it with a touch of her index finger. “Estonia,” she says. “Never been.”

She continues on, picking up knick knacks and putting them back on their shelves when she’s satisfied her curiosity. He lets her, equally curious, if for different reasons. She turns abruptly, holding a copper magnifying glass to one eye. “I spy a brooding Englishman,” she says and he plays the part by frowning at her.

“Holy shit,” she suddenly says, “look at all those vinyls.” She absentmindedly leaves her drink on a shelf, next to his 17th century scope and all but skips to other end of the room. Her fingers spider across the rows of records, occasionally sliding one out. “Figures you’d be into old school records. I bet you’ve never even owned an mp3 player.”

He knows she’s goading him, but he rises to the bait anyway.

“You know, I’m not actually an old fart. I’m an engineer. I invent things for a living.”

“Imaginary things. A time traveling phone? Come on.”

“It’s called a tachyonic antitelephone. And I’m not trying to invent it. It’s not a real thing. I’m only interested in the possible application of tachyonic particles and what they could mean for theoretical time travel.”

Sara raises an eyebrow, as if saying _see?,_  and goes back to exploring his record collection.

“Oh, wow, now this takes me back,” she says, pulling out Fleetwood Mac’s _Tusk._ It’s a good choice, and he tells her as much. She walks over to the record player, antique too. The modern reproductions never quite sound the same, he must concede, though he knows better than to say it out loud to Sara.

She slides one disc out of its sleeve and carefully drops it on the turntable. The needle makes contact with the acetate and the unmistakable tack piano introduction of _Sara_ fills the room.

“That’s a bit self-indulgent, don’t you think?”

She smiles, all dimples and impish eyes, shaking her shoulders to the beat of the song, singing along, “ _wait a minute baby, stay with me a while. Said you’d give me love, but you never told me about the fire._ ”

Her voice surprises him. It’s not bad. The song’s tempo picks up and Sara begins a two step shuffle, back and forth. She holds her hands out as if to coax him to dance with her. He steps back, though, and settles into his leather armchair. She shrugs, going back to her swaying, singing along under her breath, “ _drowning in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown_.”

“I was named after this song,” she reveals a moment later. “It was my mom’s favorite when she was a teenager. Laurel got a family name, but I was named after a famous song. It’s really morbid, actually, considering what it’s supposed to be about. When I was 14 I listened to this song every day because I was convinced I was the reincarnation of Stevie Nicks’s aborted baby.”

“Come off it, you’re having me on.”

“Dead serious,” she says, hips twisting around to the music, pretending she’s undoing imaginary laces on her dress, like the song says.

“That is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.” It’s so awful and ridiculous he can only laugh.

“What teenager didn’t think they were born into the wrong family at one point in their life?”

Rip didn’t. He never had the luxury of banal adolescent problems, but he keeps quiet lest he break the spell. Sara’s succumbed to the magic of the song, her body paying tribute through her dancing. Her eyes are closed and there is a smile on her face that looks a lot like relief. With her hair up like that and her short dress and feet bare, she looks the picture of a flowerchild. She looks, for the first time since he’s known her, at peace. The moment feels more intimate than anything they’ve ever shared before, even if she’s not looking. Or perhaps that is precisely why it feels that way. It’s a humbling privilege to behold.

She suddenly looks at him over her shoulder and smiles. It steals the breath from him. She looks like the morning sun-- bright, dangerous and inescapable all at once. Like he could sleep inside the heat of her and never feel cold again. He is inexplicably charmed by how fragile her knees look under the short length of her dress. The revelation arrives inside him like a train, or like death, so sudden, and yet, inevitable. If he were a braver man, he’d come up behind her, match the rhythm of her body, circle arms around her waist and bury his nose in the nest of her hair.

_Sara, you’re the poet in my heart. Never change, and don’t you ever stop._

But he’s just a man so very afraid.

 

||

 

“What’s that one?” Sara asks, pointing to the ceiling and he shuffles close to her to follow her line of vision.

“That’s Orion,” he answers and she hums.

They are lying on the carpet on his study floor, stargazing through the skylight. His favorite Irma Thomas record is spinning on the gramophone and his blood is scotch-warm. He suspects she can identify the constellations just fine on her own but he plays along, pointing out shapes in the night sky.

In the dark, Sara seems revealed, less beyond his reach, like she's brought down her walls enough to offer him a peek inside.

He’s uncomfortably aware of her body next to his: the sensual pout of her mouth, the curve of her shoulder, the outline of her nipples under the thin fabric of her dress, and the tempting expanse of her thighs near enough to reach over the divide and slide up bare skin and under fabric, into certain heat.

He sits up suddenly, heart beating a nervous rhythm beneath his ribs.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yes, I just need another drink.”

He gets up from the floor on legs that feel like bits of string and pours himself another scotch. His hands tremble as he brings the glass to his lips. He can hear Sara behind him get up as well. He catches sight of her on the reflection of the bar’s mirror as she goes back to exploring the room. She's now poking through his bookshelves, looking through his photographs. He puts down his glass and joins her.

Sara picks up a framed photo of Miranda. It's Rip's favorite photo of her. He’d taken it himself on a film camera. It’s not a fancy portrait, but he loves it for its simplicity. It's just her in a white t-shirt and jeans, bare feet, looking at him through the lens in that tender way that always made him feel like the center of her universe. It still does.

“She was beautiful,” Sara says.

Rip looks between the photographed past and the present future. They look like worlds apart. Dr. Saunders had said he needs to give himself permission to feel whatever comes along. But how can he, when his growing desire feels so much like infidelity to something he’d once held so dear? It’s no longer Miranda’s absence which wounds him, but rather his moving past it.

“Yes, she was,” he says.

He takes the photograph from Sara's hands and puts it back on the shelf. She steps back, putting distance between them. Something changes in her demeanor, like she’s become shuttered again.

“I'm sorry if I overstepped,” she says and she sounds oddly formal.

“You didn't,” he replies, already missing the soft intimacy they’d navigated through all night.

“I should go.”

“You don't have to,” he protests, although part of him is relieved.

“Thanks, but I really should go. It’s late and I have a few friends from the Army coming into town tomorrow and I have some things to do early in the day before I meet up with them.”

He nods.

“But thanks for inviting me in. It was.... nice.”

Nice feels like an understatement but he’s lost for words himself, so he nods again. He watches her put her boots back on and then he walks her out to her car.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” he asks, leaning on the driver’s side window.

“Yes, I’m fine. I had barely two drinks. I'll see you soon, ok?”

He waves her off and watches her car until it turns the corner and fades from his view. He turns around to go back inside and notices Mrs. Dunbar from across the street, obviously idling in her front porch, looking at him. Rip waves at her too and Mrs. Dunbar responds with a short wave of her own, obviously embarrassed. Bloody gossip. By morning the entire neighborhood would know he had a woman over.

Once inside, Rip immediately returns to his study. He takes down a cardboard box from where he'd stowed it on top of a bookcase. He places it on the coffee table and sits on the sofa. He wonders whether he should open it at all, what good would it do, before he resolves he should. From inside the box, he pulls out a set of files full of notes and newspaper clippings.

 **_Mother and son slain in brutal killing_ ** the first one reads.

He spreads the clippings out on the table until they paint a gruesome picture. He grabs his laptop and runs Gideon’s algorithm. He watches as red dots populate the map, tries to see it all in a new light. He unfocuses his eyes, trying to make out a pattern he’d somehow missed. But there are no breaking revelations.

Then, Rip does something he hasn't done in a long time, he googles Miranda's name and he goes on that website where wannabe detectives and true crime junkies trade theories about what happened to his wife and son. He reads them all again until his eyes grow tired, weighs them against what he knows.

It’s unbelievable that these people have more concern in solving the crime that the actual police. Or him, for that matter. How long has it been since he called the station to demand answers?

Gideon says it's not his job to make sure the police do theirs. But if not, then whose is it? Who's going to make sure his family is remembered? And if he himself had forgotten, then how could he blame the police for doing the same?

He looks at the headlines again. This is the reality he needs to remember. Sara Lance is a distraction he can't afford right now.

He walks over to his desk, where the velvet box with the songbird necklace is. He picks up the box, puts it inside the top drawer and then closes it shut.

 

* * *

 

Sara’s crawling. Clawing up, up, up, nails to the ground. Nothing but soil all around. She crawls and claws until her fingers are bloody. She has blood on her hands. Still, she claws and crawls up, up, up. The soil turns into bloody mud in her clawing fists. A bloody, muddy avalanche crashes down upon her. She can’t breathe. Her lungs fill with mud. She can’t breathe. She screams and water floods her open mouth, floods her entire being—she is swallowed up and floating in the ocean like an unborn baby. She swims up, legs pump, pumping, but the ocean’s surface is made of glass.

There’s an arrhythmic pounding in her ears—thu-THUMP, thump, THUMP-thump—and someone screaming her name SARA! Her eyes snap open. They burn and blur. A gasp sucks water into her mouth and she rises to the surface, choking on it.

The door slams open and in bursts Dinah screaming Sara’s name. Sara coughs and coughs until she gags, the reflex forceful and painful. Her mother slaps her back the way she used when Sara was a child and she’d swallowed something wrong.

“I’m fine, mom. I’m fine,” Sara croaks. It hurts to speak. She can't stop coughing.

“What happened!?” Dinah asks, hands still rubbing circles on Sara's bare back.

Sara looks around and the room begins to come into focus: the blue tiles, the bright florescent lights, the white plastic curtain with the grey polka dots. She looks down at her naked body and the water pooling on the bathroom floor.

“I fell asleep,” she says. “I got the floor wet. I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t matter. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Can you hand me a towel?” Sara asks, standing up on shaky legs.

Dinah rushes to comply but when she turns around she freezes, towel still hanging limply from one hand. The expression on her face moves from shock, to concern, to horror and back again. Sara realizes it's the first time she's been naked in front of her mother since she went off to college, and thus the first time Dinah’s seen the scars that mar the skin on Sara's back and torso. Sara’s not ashamed of them, as they are a reminder of the cost of her survival, but she doesn’t like to draw attention to them either.

“Sara,” Dinah whispers, somewhere between question and whimper. Her mother's always had an art for making Sara's name sound like a lament.

Dinah steps forward, the hand not holding the towel outstretched, but Sara shies away from her touch.

“It’s fine, mom, they don’t hurt. Can you just give me the towel?”

Dinah snaps out of her shock and wraps Sara in the towel herself, as if she can swaddle her and keep her safe.

“Your friend Jax is here,” Dinah says.

“Oh. Right. Thanks.”

Sara had almost forgotten.

 

||

Sara settles into the passenger seat of Jax’s pickup truck, where he'd been waiting for her to get ready. She takes in his outfit of a black long sleeved sweater and jeans and she feels better about her own choice of a simple black dress, leather jacket and her old Army boots, the ones permanently etched with Afghan dust. As he pulls away from her house, she rolls the window down, despite the cold. She leans against the open window, and stretches an arm out toward the sky. The air is damp with fog. Neither of them speak a word as Jax drives. An old country song plays on the radio.  

 

 

> _Keep your injured looks to you._
> 
> _We'll tell the world that we tried._

 

What is there to say? Tyler isn’t the first soldier they lose. He won’t be the last.

But she's so tired of funerals.

Staff Sergeant Rex Tyler, decorated veteran soldier, Army Ranger, died in Kabul just last week. Sara had met him in Iraq on her first deployment. They hadn't served together in the strictest sense. She'd been MP, he infantry. But it’d been his convoy her unit had been shadowing the day of the ambush. He was felled by enemy fire after so many years of service. Just like that. In the end, it didn’t matter how capable and experienced he was. It never does. War is chance and chaos wrapped in the pretense of structure and order. If there’s one thing Sara knows, it’s that good men die too soon while the demons linger behind for far too long.

Death has come knocking on Sara’s door so many times, and yet she's still standing. What does that say about her soul?

Jax parks the truck in front of a bar called The General. It's a dive of the worst kind, with rickety chairs, sticky tabletops, and cheap, bitter alcohol, but it's frequented by veterans because of its proximity to the VA center. Sara loves it.

Rex is being buried with full honors in his native Georgia but Sara, Jax, and a handful of soldiers who'd served with him and are currently in the vicinity of Central City had decided to get together and get a drink in his honor. Sergeant Tyler hadn’t been a fan of alcohol, but Sara thinks he would've appreciated the irony anyway.

Sara steps into the bar, Jax on her six, and she notices they are the last to arrive. Maseo, Nate, John and Hal already there, beers in hand.

“Hey, guys, guys, shh, cut the foul talk, Sarge is here,” Nate says as he spots Jax and Sara walk toward them.

“Fuck you,” Sara says, a real smile on her face. “I can't believe you guys started without me.”

They guys all get up and she takes a turn hugging each of them. These are her brothers. Men she’d served with over the years on different capacities. These days they only seemed to come together after bad news. God, she'd missed them.

“What's Hal doing here? He's Air Force,” Sara says, curling her lip in mock disgust, prompting him to yell back, “That's Captain Highball to you, Army maggot.”

“You,” John says, pointing to Jax. “I don't know you.”

“Oh, right,” Sara says. “Guys, this is Jax. Jax this is John Constantine, Hal Jordan and Maseo Yamashiro. And you already know Nate.”

The guys all exchange handshakes with Jax, except for Nate, who goes in for a hug.

“Okay, now that that's over with. Who's buying me a beer?” Sara asks, hands on her waist, feigning impatience.

“Already got that covered, luv.”

John produces a cold beer bottle from behind his back and Sara stands on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

“I knew you were my favorite for a reason,” Sara says.

“I thought it was my--”

“Don't finish that sentence.”

“I was going to say English charm, though I can't help it if you were thinking of something else, sweetheart.” He spreads his arms wide, and she takes in his shabby appearance-- wrinkled white shirt, a loosely tied tie and the ever present trench coat that looks like it's been to hell and back. Somehow, he always seems to pull it off.

“Speaking of, how does a Brit end up serving in the US Army anyway?” Jax asks as they slide into the booth. Sara ends up squeezed between John and Maseo-- the angel and the devil on her shoulders.

“Oh, it’s a very long story involving some drugs, a beautiful man and a life debt or two, and if I told you all the sordid details, I would have to kill you.” John bares his teeth in a predatory grin and winks at Jax. Jax frowns at Sara as if to say _is this guy serious?_

The guys laugh at John’s joke, even if it’s an old one that they’ve heard countless times before, but as the laughter peters out, solemnity falls on them as they all remember what has brought them together. They’ve lost people before, but something about Rex’s death hit harder. Perhaps because he was so good at being a soldier. His death is a reminder that they’re all living on borrowed time.

“Has anyone spoken to Amaya?” Sara asks, thinking of Rex's longtime girlfriend.

“I have,” Nate answers. “She's okay. Angry, hurting, but she'll be okay. She's in Georgia now, with Rex's family.”

Amaya is one the fiercest women Sara has ever met; there’s no doubt she’ll be alright, eventually. But Sara also knows grief can suffocate even the strongest of people. But Amaya is practical where Sara is chaotic. She might handle losing Rex better than Sara had losing Laurel.

“To Rex,” Sara says, raising her beer bottle in the air, “May his legacy live on in those he touched in life.”

The guys all raise their own bottles in the air and chorus a toast to Rex.

The stories start to flow after that, from the funny to the heartbreaking, all underscored with the particular brand of dark humor characteristic of veterans. But something is clear, Sergeant Tyler had made an impression on all their lives and they were all the better for having met him. Soon enough, as the drinks keep coming, they move on from eulogizing Rex to talking about themselves. It’s natural of these get togethers, they see each other so infrequently. Hal's getting married, Maseo has a baby on the way. And John's going back to Afghanistan next month for his 4th deployment. He'd always been the craziest in the bunch and Sara worries he'll be the next one to go. Jax lightens the mood by making them laugh with tales of his college experiences. When they ask about her sister, Sara fumbles through the story, fighting a knot at the base of her throat the whole time.

At some point, they relocate to the bar’s back patio, because it’s a nice night, but mostly because John wants to smoke. Sara steps aways from the group, though not too far, and quietly nurses her third beer while she watches the guys. She shares a look with Maseo and he breaks rank to come join her. He’s the quiet one, ever observant. She’s known him the longest; they’d completed basic training together.

“I heard Nyssa made Captain,” he tells her, whispering into her ear, away from the noise around them. Sara nods in acknowledgment. “Captain Raatko,” he continues, “It has a nice ring to it. So does Captain Lance. Any regrets?”

“No,” Sara confesses, a deep sigh leaving her body. “I left for a good reason.” Her family had needed her more than she'd needed to be Captain. Still, she’d left more than just a military career behind, and there’d been a time when she’d questioned her rash decision. Nyssa hadn't understood. But now, especially after Laurel, Sara's grateful for her choice.

John’s loud laughter brings her attention back to the guys. John is leaning against a lamppost, bathed in the yellow glow of the fading bulb. His eyes are closed and there is a cigarette poised between his lips. In the dim light, he almost looks like Rip. John is all arrogance and swagger where Rip is self-deprecation, but there's something about their silhouette that strikes her as similar. Two scraggy British guys in tan coats.

She might have a type.

She takes a picture of him with her phone, making sure his ill fitting shirt and coat are in frame, and sends it to Rip, with the caption ' _do you all english guys have the same shitty tailor?_ ' She tells herself she's not trying to make him jealous, but she's never been good at lying to herself. Rip's reply comes in a few moments later ( _Of course. His name is Cletus. You get a discount if you bring him biscuits_ ), but it’s the message he sends after ( _Hang around many English guys?)_ which makes her bite her lip to stop a smile from over taking her face.

She writes back: 

 

> _just you_
> 
> _and John, sometimes_

 

As night deepens the guys begin saying their goodbyes, and promise to really stay in touch this time. John kisses Sara’s neck farewell and she holds on to him tighter than she usually would, burrowing into his shoulder to breathe in his scent of nicotine and cologne.

“Don't worry about me, sweetheart. Hell’s not ready for me yet,” he says, patting her cheek with a gentle hand.

He leaves with a dramatic swish of his coat and Sara commits his shape to memory, hoping it's not the last time she'll see him. Then it's just her and Jax, but Sara's not ready to go home yet so she buys them one last beer, which they drink out in the bar's back patio.

Jax immediately starts talking about his crush. It's all he seems to mention these days, but Sara's happy to see him so excited about life again. He'd had his dark times, too, when the leg injury killed his career.

Sara spots a stick in the mud near where they're standing and she crouches by it to take a picture, already chuckling under her breath at the joke she's crafting in her head.

“Why are you taking a picture of that?” Jax says.

“I’m gonna send it to someone.”

“I don’t even wanna know."

Jax resumes his story as Sara types up a text message. She attaches the photo and captions it ‘ _it’s you_ ’, before sending it off to Rip.

“Are you even listening to me?” Jax says.

“Lily Stein gives you a major boner but you’re too afraid of Old Man Stein to ask her out. We’ve been through this.”

“Screw you,” Jax says, no real heat behind his words.

“Whatever happened to Courtney?” Sara wonders, thinking of the last girl that had held Jax’s attention.

Jax groans dramatically and rolls his eyes.

“She went off for two weeks on some humanitarian mission and came back saying she was in love with some dude named Arthur. He has long hair and a flesh beard.”

“Ew,” Sara says, and Jax nods in commiseration. “Anyway, about your Lily situation. You just have to go for it. You're a total catch, dude. You’re gonna let an old man intimidate you?"

“Thank you for the vote of confidence but you’ve obviously never met Professor Stein. He calls me Jefferson,” he says it like it's supposed to explain something. “The old man is always in my business. I thought I was getting an adviser but I got a Jewish Grandpa instead. I swear, sometimes, it’s like he’s inside my head.”

Jax has always had a flair for the dramatic.

“Aww, that means he cares about you. Obviously the solution is to charm him into setting you up with his daughter.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

Sara's considering how to respond when her phone beeps, and her attention immediately wanders from the conversation as she taps her way to reading Rip's reply, smiling into her phone.

“Okay, that’s it. Who the hell have you been texting all day? I can see dimples on your cheeks, it’s serious,” Jax says.

“It’s no one. I mean, it’s just someone from my counseling group.”

It's not like her to be so coy, but she feels protective of Rip. She doesn't think he'd appreciate having his business discussed with people he doesn't know.

“Like _someone_ someone?” Jax raises an eyebrow suggestively.

“No,” she says emphatically. “I’m not that gauche, Jax. He’s a friend.”

“Riiiight. So I take it’s going well? The _therapy_ I mean.”

“It’s not like that,” she insists.

“Sure.”

“Shut up, Jax, or I'll cut your eyes off and feed them to you,” she threatens, clipping him on the back of his head, but it falls on deaf ears as Jax giggles.

“All I'm saying, if it were like that, I'd be happy for you. You’ve been through enough, Sara, you deserve good things. I don't know the specifics, but if you want it to be more than what it is right now, I'm going to give the same advice you gave me. Just go for it.”

Deserve is a heavy word that Sara doesn’t want to claim. But want is another monster entirely and Sara knows all about hunger. She pulls forth the memory of last night: stargazing in Rip's study while wistful jazz played on the gramophone and the heat of Rip’s attention on her. Being beheld like that, it felt like fireworks.

Maybe Jax has a point.

“Come here, little brother.”

Sara grabs Jax’s face in her hand and pulls it toward her to smack a noisy kiss on his cheek.

“Let yourself be happy, Sara. I’m sure that’s what your sister wanted for you.”

Jax’s words hit her like a sudden punch in the stomach and just like that hot tears fill her eyes. She blinks, trying to will them away. She touches the gem on her necklace and lets the feel of it anchor her. Laurel. What she’d give to talk to her right now. She’d know how to sort through the maelstrom of feelings tearing trough Sara right now.

 

* * *

 

The skeleton clock lies in pieces on the worktable around him, fully living up to its name. It really is a skeleton. A dead relic that refuses to tick again. Rip’s taken it apart and put it back together three times in the span of the day. And still the gears refuse to turn. Rip’s hands are grease dirty and sore from handling all the tiny little parts. His head hurts, his eyes feel gritty.

He pushes the magnifying glass aside and leans back on his chair, sighing deeply. He’s got Irma Thomas playing. It’s been on rotation ever since Sara pulled it off the shelf a few days ago. This time, Irma is wrong, though. Time isn’t on his side.

His phone rings and Rip feels glad for the distraction. He’ll break something if he has to keep looking at the blasted clock. He looks at the display and sighs. It’s Sara, of course, it’s Sara. It’s like he’s conjured her from thought alone.

“Hello, Sara,” he says upon accepting the call.

“Hey English.”

“I do have a name, you know.” He pretends to be offended but he likes the little game they play.

“A fake name. We both know your real name isn’t Rip. What are you up to?”

He looks at the disarray in front of him. “Nothing much,” he says, the lie coming easily.

“How's the cake baking going?”

“Cake baking?”

“Don't tell me you're flaking on the homework assignment.”

“Oh. That. Yes, well no cakes have been baked I'm afraid.” Bollocks. Between trying not to think about Sara and failing to fix the stupid clock, he’d managed to forget all about the self-care exercise.

“Knew it. I got you something to help with that. But it’s outside.”

“You got me something but it’s outside,” he repeats, deadpan. “Are you having me on?”

“Just open the front door.”

Rip pushes himself off the chair, taking a moment to stretch before walking into the house and toward the front door.

“Are you there yet?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’m walking.”

“Well, hurry up.”

He wipes his grease dirty hands on his jeans before opening the door.

“All right, what’s this magical surpri--” he cuts himself off when he sees Sara in his driveway, leaning against a black motorbike.

“Surprise!” she says.

“Wait, I don’t-- Sara, what is this?”

“It’s a bike, jackass. _My_ bike. I thought we could go for a ride.” She grins at him again, all proud of herself. It makes her look slightly unhinged.

“Wait, you mean now? Are you mental?”

Her smile dims a little after his outburst. He didn’t mean to be so harsh.

“You said last week you’d always wanted to. I thought it’d be fun.”

Rip looks at the bike. It’s a sporty street model, all matte black, no chrome finishing in sight. Not exactly what he’d pick for himself-- too sleek, too sexy-- but it’s a beauty nonetheless.

“Hey, you have to,” Sara says, poking at his chest with her pointer finger. “It’s homework. You’re supposed to do something you’ve never done before, remember?”

“Where am I supposed to sit?” Rip says, still eyeing the bike.

“Behind me? You didn’t think I was going to let you drive your first time in the seat, right?” she says, suggestion coloring her voice, and much to his mortification, he feels his neck and ears heat up.

“Wait, you’re not intimidated by capable women, are you?” she adds.

“Oh, I always am.”

She laughs, loud and honest. It’s the first time he’s heard her laugh like that. And he’d caused it, and not by insulting her, like the last time he’d made her laugh. He wants to do it again.

“Are you going to get on or not?” Sara says.

The truth is he really is curious to know what it feels like. So what’s holding him back? Miranda had been terrified of motorcycles, and that was largely the reason why Rip had never given into the desire to buy one.

But Miranda isn’t here anymore.

“I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. Trust me,” Sara says.

“I do.”

“So?”

“Oh, alright, why not. Just let me get a jacket,” he says, stepping back into his house for a moment to grab a jacket, his wallet and keys before jogging back to Sara.

Sara straps on her helmet and straddles the bike with practiced ease. She holds out a spare helmet for him and he takes it from her. Sara scoots forward and he throws a leg over the bike, settling behind her. The motorcycle wobbles and he reaches out to hold on to Sara’s shoulders for support. He tries to leave a proper gap between them, but this is Sara’s bike, and she’s small. There really isn’t much room for him behind her. The bike rumbles to life and Rip feels its vibrations rattle all the way up to his skull. His pulse rushes in his ears. He doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands, but the matter is resolved when Sara suddenly tells him to hold on and takes off at full speed without further warning.

He shuts his eyes on impulse, holding on to Sara’s jacket so tightly he can feel it wrinkling in his fists. She’s a menace, weaving in and out of traffic and he winces every time she makes a turn, convinced the bike is going to topple under their combined weight. He wonders for a moment if this is how he’ll meet his maker, holding on for dear life to a madwoman. Before long, though, as he recognizes she knows what she’s doing, he relaxes. Opening his eyes proves to be difficult because of the wind resistance. From narrowed eyes he sees the city pass them by in a blur of light and noise. The world is reduced down to its parsible parts: the road, the bike, and Sara.

He fills his lungs up all the way; he’d been holding his breath in his fear. His shoulders drop and he loosens his hold on Sara’s waist. He tilts back on the bike, arms still secured around Sara, feels the bite of the February wind on his face.

He feels… empty. Not hollowed out, but rather ready to receive. He’s not thinking about Miranda or Jonas, or the unfiaxble clock. He’s not thinking of anything but the childlike joy he feels and he laughs. It bubbles up from his stomach, surprising and so liberating.

Sara takes him through places Rip has rarely seen until they end up in the trendy part of town where all the nightclubs are. She slows the bike down and turns into the side alley of one of the bigger clubs. She parks the bike, turns it off. She tells him to watch for the muffler, it’s hot, and he dismounts the bike, being mindful to not jostle it too much. He takes off his helmet, pushing sweaty bangs away from his forehead. He’s still light headed and giddy and when Sara asks him how it was he just laughs again. It’s the most adequate expression of his current emotional state, in any case.

“Thank you,” he says, unable to articulate the depth of his gratitude. But he thinks she understands anyway because she gives him the softest of smiles and says, “you’re welcome.”

“Where are we?” Rip asks, finally taking in their surroundings.

“My job.”

“And we're here why?”

“Free alcohol. I helped you with your homework, now you help me with mine.”

She chains the bike to a pole and grabs his wrist, dragging him to a side door with a pin pad. She taps the code in and leads them inside, through what looks like a storeroom. There are shelves upon shelves of boxes of alcohol, crates full of glasses of all sizes and commercial sized bags of peanuts. Sara takes him around the maze of shelves until she stops abruptly, causing him to bump into her. She lets go of his wrist and reaches into one of the boxes for a bottle of scotch.

“Oh, we’re stealing now?” He can hear the dad tone in his voice come through.

“When I said free alcohol, did you think they were just going to give it to us?”

Actually, he did. He figured they'd get one drink, not a whole bottle.

“Fine, if it makes you feel better, I’ll pay for it,” Sara says, waving the bottle at him. He snatches it from her. It's his favorite. She remembered. He supposes he can't be too mad at her.

The door that leads to the club opens, and the room is drowned in loud music, thumping bass, and flashing strobe lights. A young woman walks in, carrying two empty crates.

“Hey, Shawna,” Sara says and the young woman jumps, causing her to lose her hold on the crates.

“Sara, I didn’t see you there. What are you doing back here? Were you on the schedule today?”

“Nope. Just hanging out. This is my friend Rip.”

Rip waves at her and Shawna lifts her chin in greeting. She looks as confused as he feels.

Sara grabs two glasses from a nearby shelf and takes hold of his wrist again.

“Wait, we're going out there?” Rip says, realizing she means to take him through the door Shawna just came in from. Sara nods. “But I'm not, you know, dressed for that.”

He pulls on his ratty t-shirt self-consciously, thinking about all the college aged kids out there with trendy clothes. What if he runs into one of his students?

“Just trust me,” she says again.

He's beginning to feel he'd follow her to the gates of hell, if only she asked him to trust her.

 

||

 

When Sara mentioned she worked as a bartender, he'd pictured a dive bar with pockmarked wooden counters, colorful patrons and a pool table. This club is the opposite of that: trendy dance music, strobe lights that make his head hurt and sleek acrylic furniture. They sit across from each other in a secluded VIP area that Sara co-opted, despite his protests. He's thankful for it though. At least they're away from the worst of the crowd.

They're on their third drink already and Rip feels pleasantly buzzed. Drinking always helps with turning down the volume of the noise inside his head. They succumbed to the heat about a half and hour ago and both their jackets rest on the empty seat across from them.

“Have you always had that motorbike here? How come I'd never seen it before?” Rip asks, swirling his drink around in the glass.

Sara shakes her head.

“I left it behind in Star City. I had a friend send it over.”

Rip hears the implicit 'for you' that fits at the end of that sentence.

“Good friend,” he says, hoping she will hear _his_ implicit message.

“Rich friend,”she clarifies. “You ever hear of Oliver Queen?”

Rip frowns, trying to place the name.

“You mean Robert Queen’s son? From Queen Industries?”

“The very same.”

“Wait a minute…” Rip trails off as a terrible realization comes over him. “Oh. I remember now. Robert Queen’s yacht had an accident at sea, about 10 years ago. You were on that boat.”

“10 points to Slytherin.”

Sara laughs at her own joke but Rip doesn't find it funny. He remembers the headlines: a hijacking at sea and a rescue that took too long.

“I am so sorry,” he says, staring at her half in awe, half horror. The stories he's heard. To survive what she did... she must have been so strong.

“Yeah, that’s what everyone always says. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But that’s life, huh? A collection of sorrys.”

She pour herself another drink.

“What have you been up to since Thursday, besides not baking cakes?” she says.

Rip frowns over his glass. He can't get used to Sara’s abrupt changes in conversation. But he recognizes she doesn't want to talk about the boat and he has to respect that, no matter how curious he is.

“I bought a broken clock, tried to fix it. Failed quite spectacularly.” He sighs and tilts back in his chair.

“I win. I buried a friend this week.”

She says it so nonchalantly, like she's talking about the shopping. Rip lets his chair drop and settles both arms on the table, leaning into Sara. He searches her face but she remains stoic.

“He died in Afghanistan last week. Soldiers die, right? It’s what they do.” Sara sniffs what’s left of her scotch and swallows it down at once. “We either die or come back to live in a nightmare from which there is no waking.”

“That’s why your army friends were in town. Why didn’t you tell me before? You could’ve.”

“Because all we talk about is death. I just wanted to forget. If only for the night.”

“I’m really sorry about your friend, Sara.”

“So am I.”

He places a hand on top of hers where it rests on the table and she turns it, squeezing his hand back for a second, before letting go. It’s dark where they are, but he thinks he sees tears in her eyes, her mask slipping just enough for him to glimpse at her real pain.

“I’m tired, Rip. Have you ever been tired?”

The way she says it, it sounds like a confession of a long held truth, like she's searching for absolution, and she wants him to give it to her. She’s not speaking of a simple lack of energy but of a weariness bone deep, soul deep. The kind of weariness that leaves you feeling thinned out, half dead. Rip nods. A rueful smile appears on Sara’s face.

“Fuck, man. Look at us, a pair of pathetic sad drunks.”

Sara dries her eyes with the palms of her hands and gets up from her seat on slightly wobbly legs. She excuses herself for a moment and disappears into the darkness of the club. She comes back a few minutes later carrying a tray full of very colorful shots. They look radioactive.

“Okay, new rule,” she says. “No more whining about how shitty our lives are. From now on, we’re gonna forget about it all, and we're gonna have fun. Deal?”

His eyes flick in deliberation between the tray of shots and Sara’s eager face. He picks the least offensive looking glass, shrugs, and holds it up in the air.

“Deal.”

They clink their shot glasses together and throw them back at once.

“Christ, that's foul,” he says, wincing at the terrible taste. “Give me another.”

Sara grins at him, full with dimples, and he thinks, yes, he'd probably follow her down into hell.

 

* * *

 

 

Rip is telling her a story about his misspent youth on the streets of East London, or at least Sara thinks he is. She’s not paying attention to the specifics anymore. She’s resting her head on one hand, elbow to the table, taking him in, taking pleasure in just watching him. He seems so much smaller now without his ever present layers of clothing. He’s slouching in his seat, not because he’s trying to hide himself, but because he’s at ease, relaxed. She’s never seen him like this, so loose, unburdened. It's like she's getting a glimpse of the real him, without the trappings of grief. She’s never noticed it before, but he talks with his hands.

And even with the unkempt beard and the hair that’s a few inches too long, Sara finds him incredibly attractive. Sara doesn’t mean to become a cliche, but the accent is charming, dammit, especially now that the excess alcohol has softened all his proper edges. He pauses in his story, and she laughs dutifully. It hasn’t escaped her notice how he lights up every time she does it.

She scoots her chair closer until their knees touch under the table. There is no reaction from him. He’s still prattling on, unaware of the moral conundrum Sara’s debating in her head right now. She knows she’s treading on very dangerous ground. It’s just, she wants him, the way a naughty child wants a toy she doesn't deserve. Jax's words circle in her head: just go for it.

Sara goes for a tried and true move, and drops her shoulder, makingthe strap of her tank top slide down her shoulder. When his eyes follow it, she knows she has him. It’s almost too easy. Rip pauses in his storytelling and reaches forward, fondles the strap of Sara's shirt between his middle and pointer fingers. His thumb brushes over the tip of the wing tattooed on her arm.

“Did it hurt?” he asks. He’s not quite slurring his words, but close.

“I kinda liked it,” Sara says, her voice low and raspy.

It figures he likes the tattoo. She should've guessed.

The thing is, there’s still a little of 19 year old Sara inside 29 year old Sara; the girl playing a dangerous game of seduction with a man that doesn’t belong to her. She can’t help it; it’s a power thing. And right now, when they're both liquor soaked and unhibited, there’s nothing she wants more than to see Rip’s eyes glaze over with something other than apathy. Sara knows she’s a weapon of mass destruction. She leaves chaos in her wake. And he looks like someone she could hurt. But he stares at her like a man does. Even if he’d like to pretend he doesn’t.

His left hand settles on the table and her eyes are drawn to his wedding ring. It glints in the dark as the strobe lights hit it, like a beacon or perhaps a sign warning her to stay away. Danger. Danger.

Sara's never been too good at heeding warnings.

The song changes to a tune Sara immediately recognizes as Lykke Li’s cover of Drake’s ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home’. The song is dreamy and sensual, what passes for a slow ballad in a place like this. Sara loves this song.

“Dance with me,” she says as the song proclaims _I want your hot love and emotion._

His eyes go round in alarm but she pretends she doesn’t see it as she grasps his hands in hers and drags him to the floor. Sara knows better than to move them front and center on the dance floor, so she stops a few paces away from their table, where it's just them in the dark.

The song is a little too on the nose, but no one’s ever accused her of being subtle, and she really does love it. Sara presses her back against his front and loops one of his arms around her waist, reaching up and over with her other arm to touch fingertips to his neck. He can't dance really, but she's doing the work for both of them, guiding them in a slow, sensual sway. It's so high school but she can't help it, the need to push his buttons. Just to see how far he'll allow her to go.

They stay like that, front to back, until the song’s tempo picks up and Sara turns around to hook her arms around his neck and slot herself between one of his thighs, pressing her hips up against his. She can feel his heart beats frantic between them. He's terrified and yet, he can't keep his eyes off her face.

Sara's always had a soft spot for wounded creatures. Ever since that time that canary with the broken wing fell into their backyard. Her dad had gone out and bought her a cage so she could keep it, nurse it back to health. But her mother had always warned her away from broken boys. She said, Sara, they will not thank you if you fix them. They will take from you to give to themselves and leave you dry and empty.

But Sara doesn’t want to fix Rip. She wants to fit his jagged edges against hers, fill the cracks with molten gold, see what new shape they create.

She buries her face into the heat of his neck, and feels him shudder as goosebumps raise up over his body. The blunt curve of his nails rake over the exposed skin on her lower back. The song's tempo changes again and with it the sway of Sara's hips against his body. Still, he doesn’t protest.

She hasn’t craved intimacy with a man like this since her and John’s short lived relationship years ago. Hasn't been with a man at all since John if she doesn’t count the last desperate time with Oliver, a few weeks after Laurel’s funeral. And she doesn’t. There had been nothing sexy about that. Just a violent, wrenching, wretched loneliness.

But that’s not what she wants right now. She wants the abandon and lack of restraint that comes with drunken sex, yes. Rip is so tightly coiled all the time. What would happen if he were to come undone?

She feels hot all over, eyes and breath heavy, her clothes stick to her sweaty body, but his skin is cool to the touch and she imagines his hands roaming her body, stemming the fire of her skin. She closes her eyes and her mind is accosted by snapshots of fantasies: her arched back against a wooden stall door, bent knees and the rough scratch of a beard against the soft inside of her thighs. She whines into Rip’s shoulder and it’s swallowed by the loud music. She licks his throat, his stubble prickling her tongue.

She pulls back. Rip's pupils are blown wide and Sara imagines herself diving right into them to disappear inside of him, the two of them becoming one. The thought terrifies her: that she longs to be inside of him as she longs to have him inside of her. The two urges diametrically opposed, or at least to Sara.

Sex is not love and love is not sex.

She'd loved Oliver once, when she was a still a girl and Oliver was still a boy. It was a selfish, unsophisticated infatuation, hot and dangerous, that had drowned them both. But it'd held them together through their shared crucible. She'd tried to love Nyssa in the quiet, settled way that adults do, but Nyssa's love was like a dust storm, sweeping in its awe and its destruction. Nyssa had seen the beast inside, and she'd fed it. And in the end whatever love Sara had for her hadn't been enough to sustain them.

If Oliver had been the jungle and Nyssa the desert, what would Rip be? Where does he fit in the landscape of her story?

_Just go for it._

She leans in and brushes the tip of her nose against Rip’s. He looks at her lips and she holds her breath. The hand on her back tightens for a second before he drops it completely. He steps back, and stands in the dance floor as if he's woken from sleepwalking. Like he has no idea what he's doing there. He looks at her with betrayal written on his face and Sara feels the bottom drop from her stomach. Heart in her throat she watches Rip grab his jacket and run away.

Fuck.

She stands alone on the dancefloor, watching his figure disappear into the crowd and she remembers something she heard in a movie once: it’s funny how beautiful people look when they’re walking out the door.

The shame overtakes her. It’s like she’s choking on it. And the moment feels dirtier than any one night stand, because she’d tried to take what wasn’t freely given. And she’s not sure she can forgive herself for that.

The beast inside cackles, whispering, _this is who you are, Sara._

This is who you’ll always be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got really musical. If you're interested in this sort of thing the songs were: Sara - Fleetwood Mac; Hold On, We're Going Home- Lykke Li; I mentioned Irma Thomas. The record I was referencing is "Wish Someone Would Care", which has such hits as "I Need Your Love So Bad", "Another Woman's Man", and of course, "Time is on My Side."
> 
> I know better than to try to predict when the next update will come. Hopefully it will be soon. Thanks again for sticking with me. I appreciate it so much.

**Author's Note:**

> I did my research regarding how group grief counseling works, and I've tried to be as authentic as I could be, while still building an interesting narrative. If something seems really, really off, drop me a line. You can find me on tumblr at starcitysirens.


End file.
